RACE STRATEGY REPORT

As usual James Allen has come out with his excellent Race Strategy Reports with the assistance of Mark Gillan. Since we are having back to back races, time is of the essence. Here I will share with you the report which gives good insight into the pace of the top 3 teams in Melbourne - Lotus, Ferrari and Red Bull and what we can look forward to this weekend.

Some interesting points to ponder:

Lotus

The impressive note was that Raikkonen set the fastest lap near the end, 1.2 seconds faster than the Red Bull, having been 1.2 seconds slower in qualifying than Vettel.

Mercedes

There were plenty of positives for Mercedes to take away, but in Malaysia they will surely be working more carefully studying tyre life on long runs during Friday practice.

Ferrari

Massa had outqualified and outstarted his team mate so was in position on merit and he had the fastest pit stops. But it definitely took something away from Alonso’s race effort. It’s debatable whether Alonso could have beaten Raikkonen had he been clear, probably not.

McLaren

With a slower than expected car and clearly some problems to deal with, it looked like there was an element of desperation about their moves; shake the tree and hope something happens.

Red Bull

Considering Vettel’s pace, it’s clear from this graph that the Red Bull didn’t have anything like the pace in race conditions that it had in qualifying. This could be due to a number of factors, but thermal tyre management is the most likely culprit.

This excellent report together with the fuel adjusted graph can be found here.

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