Ferrari held an unusual media briefing in Monaco as its Head of Strategy gave a presentation relating to matters that must be taken into account at the unique street circuit. Obvious sly remarks aside, Motorsport Week reports back…
Formula 1 media sessions are usually restricted to drivers, team principals, occasionally team managers or sometimes senior chassis or engine engineers. It’s extremely rare that, during a race weekend, a session is held with a strategist. And not only a session, but a lesson of sorts, one which can be viewed with a little bit of ironic hindsight given the blunder that ultimately cost the team in Monaco.
A 45-minute presentation was held with Head of Race Strategy Iñaki Rueda and Head of Track Engineering Matteo Togninalli during Monaco’s usual ‘off’ day last Friday. Rueda joined Ferrari in 2015 after previously working for Renault/Lotus, and leads a group of strategists present both at the circuit and back in Maranello. The presentation was held to specifically discuss the challenges and dangers posed by Monaco (as opposed to reviewing decisions at other races or upcoming events). “We’re going to give out forms at the end to check you were listening,” jokes Ferrari’s Press Officer Silvia Hoffer Frangipane to assembled media.
The softly-spoken Rueda discusses the strategic implications of Monaco while Togninalli explains the measures taken by teams to cope with the unique demands of the street circuit, while obviously not delving into full detail; some secrets do need to be preserved.
Rueda, like a University lecturer, runs through the main variables teams have to consider that might upset a normal strategy. “The Safety Car is common,” he explains. “We’ve had 18 in the last 20 years, so we’re quite certain there will be one.” Ironically, it later transpires, the Safety Car was deployed – caused by a Ferrari driver. “The first thing is the pit stop loss. We usually lose around 20 seconds in the pit lane, but with the Safety Car everyone is at a reduced speed, usually 60% slower, which means instead you only lose 12 seconds. As it’s impossible to overtake in Monaco you can gain eight seconds – or lose eight seconds.” If the Safety Car appears late on, as in 2015 – or at the preceding Spanish Grand Prix – the team will “want to see if the driver can stop. In Spain nearly everybody stopped. But if you stop in Monaco you might not make that position back.” The Virtual Safety Car can also have an impact, with the biggest difference compared to the normal Safety Car being that the cars are not bunched. A race stoppage must also be considered. “We’ve had two in the last 10 years,” says Rueda, while pointing to the halted Formula 2 race earlier the same day. “The regulations are different to Formula 2. If they have a red flag they have to pit again [if a driver has not stopped]. If we have a red flag, we do not have to do a pit stop. Our regulations do not say we have to do a pit stop, just that we have to run two compounds. And we can change compounds under the red flag. If you get very lucky, and you have not stopped yet, and there is a red flag, you are very lucky!”
Teams will also push the fuel limits as much as possible at any race – running as light as possible (also helping tyre wear) – but this is exaggerated in Monaco due to the ability to maintain track position at a slow pace. “You can do a lot of fuel saving without being overtaken,” explains Rueda. “And also we know with a Safety Car that you burn usually 30-40% less fuel than under normal racing conditions. If you believe that there will be five laps under the Safety Car you might be able to put in three laps less of fuel.” As it transpired, the Safety Car was out for four laps. Not a bad estimation.
This is all fairly expected stuff so far. Where it gets interesting is the discussion surrounding overcuts and undercuts, with Monaco 2017 – where Ferrari scored a 1-2 but with its drivers swapping (not the intention, it still stresses) through the pit stop phase – used as a template. Teams often deploy the undercut in order to benefit from fresher rubber to jump a rival. But at low-energy circuits the mould can be different. Low-energy circuits are classed as those at which it is difficult to get tyres up to, or maintaining, temperature and working range, ostensibly due to the absence of high-speed corners that feature lateral energy. At the low-energy Baku passing is straightforward so track position is less of an issue. But at the low-energy Monaco nailing the strategy is crucial. Monaco’s short lap and low average speed means getting tyres both up to temperature and in the right operating window is a major challenge, and it can define a race. Rueda gets out a graph.
“Here you have a graphic of a tyre mould,” he explains.
“You have the Soft tyre, in red, and on the x-axis you have number of laps, and the y-axis how slow it is. So the first lap of this tyre is as fast as you will get, after that you will lose pace, every lap after you will go slower. On lap 10 this tyre will be around one second slower [than on lap one]. Say the Medium, it starts being slower and ends up being faster. For both of them on the first lap the Soft is 1.2s quicker than the Medium, but by lap 14 the Medum is faster than the Soft. You see those two inflection points, one is for the Soft going slower, this kind of kink is very unusual. We only see it in places where we suffer difficult warm-up, it takes you a few laps to get working properly. So in a race let’s say you start on Soft and eventually put on Mediums, now this Medium has zero laps on it. So okay on lap 12 of the race if you stop there for Mediums, there will be one or two laps in which the Medium is slower than the Soft, a very short moment, and you might be able to capitalise, and it’s this small window where the overcut might happen.”
It is what happened in 2017 – and again, graph time.
“So this is Monaco 2017, Lap 32,” says Rueda, pointing to a screen that has a driver tracker with all participants registered. “The race order is Kimi, Seb, Bottas, Verstappen, Ricciardo. Whoever stops first will start the chain reaction. These are some of the tools we use for race strategy. We have the GPS map, F1 provides the service, what F1 does not provide is pit stop tails.”
A ‘pit stop tail’ is a graphic attached to each driver’s name and gives an indication as to where on track they will re-join in the event of a stop. “Kimi has a tail that goes from here to here,” Rueda points out. “This means if Kimi stops, he will come out in front of Sainz. But at this stage Bottas would emerge behind Sainz. We have a gap of variability in the event of a slow or fast stop, so if it takes three or so seconds we can see Kimi will still be ahead of Sainz.”
With Verstappen close to Bottas, Red Bull pulls the pin by attempting an undercut in the battle for third.
“Bottas will have to stop otherwise he gets undercut,” explains Rueda. “You can see the tail closing, and the next lap Verstappen will be within that tail. This is the most normal way of doing race strategy. Bottas reacts. And our race engineers tell our drivers this. We know we will have to react to Bottas. So Kimi gets called in. And comes in. Now this is something that is quite peculiar. If you looked at the pit stop tail before it was quite tight. Kimi, if he stops now, comes way ahead of Bottas, so in theory we can keep him out, as Bottas will not close that gap so soon, but here we have a nice problem to have. You have two cars leading the race. This means you need to build some margin, the second car will lose 3-4 seconds if we have to pit on the same lap. In this case we need to stop Kimi this lap so we make sure Seb can pit next time around if Bottas starts going quickly. Kimi comes out ahead of Bottas. So far so good.”
But, there is a complication. Ricciardo has also stayed out. And the overcut transpires to be faster.
“[Seb and Ricciardo are] the two cars that now will try and make the overcut work. The two cars do not have a threat from behind so they can try and make it work. Kimi is on Medium tyres, so there will be a window of opportunity in which the cars that stayed out can overcut those who have pitted. The tail of Ricciardo is edging over Bottas and Verstappen already, and at the same time Sebastian is setting purple sectors, so it’s looking very good. So now there’s two points here. One is that Sebastian is setting purple sectors, so the overcut is working nicely, the guys with the Medium tyres are struggling to warm them up and those on Softs are still going fast. The second point we have to play as a team is we’ve got Ricciardo behind who has not stopped. If we stop this lap with Sebastian, and Ricciardo does not stop, Sebastian will come out just in front of Kimi, still P1-2 effectively. But if there is a Safety Car a lap after then Ricciardo will fall in front of us and we will not win the race. So Sebastian cannot stop before Ricciardo, else we risk to give the win to Red Bull. As you can see Ricciardo has overcut both Bottas and Verstappen, his tail is way ahead, and Sebastian is still purple, so there is no point for him to stop. At some point Ricciardo will start seeing he has nothing more to gain and eventually Bottas and Verstappen will start closing that tail. So Ricciardo stops. And now with Sebastian we have no reason not to stop. He gets told ‘engine 1’ and that was the code to stop. And because of that small window he comes out very, very close to Kimi, and he overcuts Kimi. Eventually Seb comes out ahead. It happens at very few tracks. But this is where it can happen.”
As it turned out in 2019 the win battle was not decided by either the overcut or undercut as the Leclerc-instigated Safety Car meant the front-runners stopped on the same lap. But further down the order the likes of Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz Jr. profited as their respective teams used the overcut to jump Ricciardo and Kevin Magnussen, who became mired in yet-to-stop traffic.
That’s the strategic element of Monaco but how does a team approach the weekend as a whole compared to other events?
Togninalli takes to the stage.
“The average speed of the lap is in the order of 160kph, to give you an idea Monza is 260kph,” says Togninalli. “It’s the slowest circuit of the year. The grip-limited speed, so where we are not full throttle, is 120kph, the average of the year is around 160kph, the highest is Austria is around 180, why mention this? These are all characteristics that makes us do things differently here to other places. Why do the tyres struggle in Monaco? The lap is very short, the energy is very low, the speed is slow, it means the energy is low. We need to create the temperature and the chemical aspect that allows the car to be faster. It’s where we focus during the weekend: it’s how we put energy into the tyres. We can use devices, as you know, we make the brakes softer to warm up the rubber in a way we can work better.”
But it’s not just about the rubber. Teams have to adapt their cars to Monaco’s narrow, bumpy and torturous layout.
“We spend 45% of the time on full throttle,” explains Togninalli. “On other circuits this is in 60-70%, Monza is the highest. What does it mean? Here it’s important the load in the car, efficiency is not important as there’s no straights, or [they’re] very short, it’s less refined aero. Usually teams in Monaco have very high downforce wings that are not very efficient, we have devices for Monaco to improve the load, so we make the tyres work. Mechanical grip is important as well. We have the slowest turn of the season, the hairpin, it’s 45kph – if you think about it with an Alfa Giulia you do it faster than an F1 car, so it’s not normal! We design front suspension for that corner otherwise we would not be able to do the turn, the radius is very little, we’re talking nine or 10 metres.”
Teams also introduce stronger components for street circuits in order to ensure drivers can brush the barriers without causing damage to the car.
“It’s almost normal to touch walls,” he explains. “And we know this. We need to allow the driver to do so, to scratch the wall. When we design the suspension we have load cases coming so that we don’t break the suspension when we scratch the wall, such as at the tunnel entry.
“Another characteristic for Monaco is that the car movement over the road is very demanding, it’s bumpy, and also up and down, Sainte Devote, going towards the casino, going to the tunnel, and we have many corners out of camber, the slope of the corner is towards the external part, which is not helpful for balance, so we have systems we use only for this race. For example at the exit of the tunnel where the car is braking from 300kph, there is a slope change, and that is causing a variation in the rear vertical load of around 600 to 700 kilos and this causes front locking, rear locking, we need to work on brake balance, differential, how we tune the brakes, and how you cope with this is extremely challenging.
“The differential – this is the highest energy of the season. Why? There’s many corners and many of them are low speed. The differential must work a lot, it is there to allow the car to turn in low speed corners and keep the balance in braking.”
Teams also introduce special cooling packages; it’s not a race that takes place in hot conditions, but the absence of straights and the tendency for cars to get stuck behind one another means the brakes and power unit can take a beating.
But getting the car in the correct operating window is one element – there’s also driver confidence to consider, meaning teams usually opt against introducing new parts unless absolutely necessary. Drivers want to hit the ground running in FP1 and get into a rhythm rather than concentrating on back-to-back comparisons or extensive set-up evaluations.
“Maybe the first time [a driver is on track they leave] 5cm to the wall, the second 2cm, the third zero, they don’t go straight on it. So driver confidence is maybe more than other tracks. Maybe we change the car less here than other places as then it takes longer to adapt. We need the combination of car and driver. If we change every time the driver must re-adapt. It’s not a place where we play around a lot compared to other places.”
Rueda and Togninelli are an enlightening duo who have clearly worked their way to the top through skill and graft. But, as ever in life, even the teachers can err. Some of Togninelli’s final comments prove painful with hindsight, in the wake of Ferrari failing to safely navigate Leclerc through Q1.
“When we come here our priority, and this is a special place, is qualifying,” he says.
“We care not so much about the race preparation as this year we run only qualifying tyres until qualifying, which usually we don’t do, as it’s basically almost impossible to overtake. If you start first you finish first, without a mistake. Therefore our objective is to start first. This is different than usual. It’s a different plan, so a different approach to set-up, we compromise qualifying less than the race. We optimise qualifying and we accept the race compromises.
“Driver confidence is fundamental, he must be comfortable to go close to the wall. It’s normal in Q1, even top teams, doing seven, eight, 10 laps, and getting the best at the end. Why? Because it’s very difficult to get a clean lap, the driver should get used to it, the tyres get ready, and we have a lot of traffic with everyone on track.”
It was an insightful lesson to the extent that even Team Principal Mattia Binotto sat alongside the motley crew of journalists, eager to learn what he could. Next time they’ll surely make sure they don’t linger too close to the Q1 trap door…
