Oliver WhiteValencia proved to be a mix bag in terms of strategy, with many teams and drivers opting for two-stops, but a fair few attempting just one scheduled stop. although the incidents at the start of the race meant that although a few drivers did realistically make one stop in terms of their strategies, they did indeed make two visits down the pitlane to get some damage rectified. The choice of tyre compound also proved to be interesting, with a no defining way to go and the teams running different uses of the tyres during the race. The winning strategy of Rubens Barrichello saw the Brazilian start on the soft (harder) compound and remain that way until the second stop before changing to the super-softs. Barrichello divided the 57 laps in to thirds, stopping on lap 20 and lap 40.
Valencia 2009
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Stint 1
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Stint 2
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Stint 3
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Stint 4
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| Ferrari | ||||
 Kimi Raikkonen |
Super Soft | Super Soft (19) | Soft (40) | |
 Luca Badoer |
Super Soft | Super Soft (29) | Soft (44) | |
| McLaren | ||||
 Lewis Hamilton |
Super Soft | Super Soft (16) | Soft (37) | |
| Heikki Kovalainen |
Super Soft | Super Soft (17) | Soft (38) | |
| BMW | ||||
 Robert Kubica |
Super Soft | Soft (16) | Super Soft (40) | |
 Nick Heidfeld |
Super Soft | Super Soft (23) | Soft (43) | |
| Renault | ||||
 Fernando Alonso |
Soft | Soft (17) | Super Soft (42) | |
 Romain Grosjean |
Soft | Soft (1) | Super Soft (29) | Super Soft (43) |
| Toyota | ||||
| Jarno Trulli |
Soft | Super Soft (35) | ||
| Timo Glock |
Soft | Soft (1) | Super Soft (33) | Super Soft? (49)* |
| Scuderia Toro Rosso | ||||
| Jaime Alguersuari |
Soft | Super Soft (23) | Super Soft (34) | |
 Sebastien Buemi |
Super Soft | Super Soft (1) | Super Soft (25) | DNF (44) |
| Red Bull Racing | ||||
 Mark Webber |
Soft | Soft (20) | Super Soft (43) | |
| Sebastian Vettel |
Soft | Soft (16) | Soft (17) | DNF (24) |
| Williams | ||||
| Nico Rosberg |
Soft | Soft (20) | Super Soft (43) | |
 Kazuki Nakajima |
Soft | Super Soft (31) | Super Soft (40) | No Tyres (57) |
| Force India | ||||
| Adrian Sutil |
Soft | Super Soft (23) | Super Soft (38) | |
| Giancarlo Fisichella |
Soft | Super Soft (32) | ||
| Brawn | ||||
| Jenson Button |
Soft | Soft (19) | Super Soft (42) | |
 Rubens Barrichello |
Soft | Soft (20) | Super Soft(40) | |
Ollie, any idea what tyres Glock was on in his fourth stint? He took three pitstops, but only three stints are listed in your chart.
*Mental Note: Turn off comments on these posts as they only encourage difficult questions. 😉 *
Good question. I only noted one scheduled stop and one unscheduled on the first lap. I’m going to throw this back at you and ask how you know Glock took another stop. The reason I ask is not because I have an ego the size of Hampshire and believe I am right, but because I didn’t note it, and Trulli did a one-stopper, completing just under half the race on Super-Softs. At least, that was my observation of his race as well. Anyway, it is therefore conceivable that Glock ran an extra two laps on Super-Softs on a very similar strategy. Fisichella also ran 25 laps on the Super-Soft, by my reckoning. Though I will add to this, 20+ laps on that compound does seem like quite a stretch.
If I am wrong though (which is in all probability true), the answer is no, I don’t know what tyres Glock finished on. If I come across a photo of Timo towards the end of the race though, I’ll note the tyres and add a comment here.
Aside: Loving the orange splash on the avatar. And the pink one you have for vee8.
Thanks Ollie!
I saw that Glock had taken three pitstops on the FIA’s website (PDF) and on the F1.com pitstop summary.
I’m not desperate to find out any more because I got to the bottom of the aspect of Glock’s race that puzzled me. (I don’t normally take such an interest in pitstops and strategies!) So it’s no big deal, but you might like to know for the sake of completeness.
So do you compile all of the information for these posts yourself? There isn’t anywhere that provides a list of what tyres the drivers used? If so, mega kudos to you!
I’ll take that mega kudos, thank you very much. 🙂
Yeah, as of late 2008 I’ve been noting the pitstops of all the drivers and what tyres they went from and to. As you can imagine, it’s quite tricky (and partly why I gave up the F1Fanatic Live Blog moderating duties). Especially as not all pitstops are covered visually by FOM and audibly by the BBC commentators.
When a tyre change is unknown, I sometimes refer to photos. From a photo, I can usually figure out what part of the race it is by assessing what I know of their race (and therefore what tyre they are on in the photo, does it tie-in or not with what I do know) and by other drivers in the photo and my own memory of the race. If I’m still stumped, I’ll take an educated guess. Which is kinda what I did with Glock. Although I was pretty certain he followed Trulli and one-stopped. Well, essentially one-stopped. Obviously, there are the occasional glitches with my system. 😀
To answer a question that I know will arise in the future: Why are my laps slightly out? Because I’m a numpty when watching races and look at the TV screen graphic and not Live Timing. Therefore, I see 24/57 and think Lap 33. It is actually lap 34. FOM really, really need to have a graphic that says 24/57 – L34. And that has been a peeve of mine since before I ran BlogF1. It goes way back to the late ’90s.
And to answer your final point… I had no idea F1.com provided that information. So mega thanks to you for linking. Kudos to Duncan! I knew Autosport did a tyre strategy post (which I usually ignore because I generally publish before them anyway). But I am unaware of another complete table that shows tyres and pitstop laps altogether. And there certainly wasn’t when I started doing this in China 2008.
So yes, it’s all down to my own observation. In the original posts, I had a little disclaimer at the bottom, although that has been forgotten about this year. If asked though, I don’t guarantee its accuracy, but they are near-enough what has been happening during the race.
The hardest part of the strategy posts is the starting tyre and the non-televised teams/drivers (Force India, STR, Nakajima etc…) because although I know they’ve stopped (thanks to Live Timing changing to red), I don’t always know what tyre they changed to.
Still, I quite enjoy doing it. And all the time I enjoy doing it is all the time you’ll continue to get it. 🙂
Oh god, I’ve just seen how ugly that table is I linked to in the previous comment. Ugh, what was I thinking with a giant header for the team names!? And prime/option? Who cares? Not even FOM bother with a P/O graphic, probably because like everyone else, they don’t know (immediately) either – there’s just too much brain work involved with that one while you’re watching a race. Hard or soft. Soft or softer. Hard or harder. Etc…
But then I look at the current tables and think they’re okay-ish, and then I see how sexy the tables look in the next version of BlogF1 and feel a bit, well you know, excited. 🙂
Also, I’ve added an asterisk to the post for Glock’s third visit to the pitlane, and it links to Duncan’s comment. I’ll amend the post tomorrow when I can properly digest this awesome new information I’ve been introduced to. I reckon I’m still up before them though. I’ll check next weekend, but I’m (possibly) willing to put a fiver on being published before FOM and FIA. That, that is where the ego-the-size-of-hampshire comes in. 😛
Great stuff Ollie! I don’t know how you manage to do all the work you do for this site. Incredible stuff. I feel bad for nitpicking now! 🙂
Personally, I think the FIA should publish them. They must observe which tyres the drivers are on to make sure they all use each type of tyre, so they ought to just bung it up on the website. In MotoGP the types of tyres are even displayed on a caption during the race (I think they are declared before the race begins). Obviously they don’t have tyre changes there, but this is certainly something F1 should look at to make this information more easily digestible instead of leaving the fans scratching their heads yet again.
Don’t be. I know I jest a fair amount (with the *opening sentence*) but I appreciate things like this because it shows a few things; I’m not perfect and make mistakes on a horrifically frequent basis, I am no longer (or as of tomorrow, will be no longer) displaying false information, and I feel happy knowing that someone else is reading these posts. Especially being someone who themselves run a Formula One blog. How cool is that. Other in-the-know people are reading me. And introducing me to new content elsewhere. I think that’s bloomin’ marvelous. 🙂
This is slightly cross-posted because I edited the comment Duncan responded to while he was responding, and then responded again, obviously. As am I…
I totally agree. They may not know in advance what tyre a driver is going to change to, and as with McLaren, they may not know until the car is ready leave the pit box. But, they have spotters in the pitlane and they have, or should have, the greatest insight to this kind of thing than any other person or entity at the race. Surely they must, it’s their job to.
Therefore I, like you, don’t understand why all this information isn’t published. Autosport do a reasonable job at publishing lots of geeky info like this, but their method is simply horrible for a whole variety of reasons. Readability, search-ability etc… It’s just horrible for a reader. FOM is okay, but limited.
Edit: I’m having a real geeky moment right now and am thinking of searching for and registering a domain. Maybe OllieDoesF1StatsBetterThanF1.com? /Edit
I will never claim to be awesome, but at least I make an attempt. The FIA doesn’t even have to think to publish this sort of stuff, they just have to copy-and-paste, hit ‘Upload’ and enjoy a nice cup of tea. In fact, they could automate it, live. Yes, live!
Ditto to FOM as well. I am impressed with what FOM do though in this regard, and assume they run from the FIA’s stats (or a combination with LG, and I assume the FIA do the same, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the FIA had their own timing system separate from what we see on the TV, it just wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest).
If my wild assumption is right, then I wonder why the FIA are allowing FOM to publish information in a much more user-friendly and readable way than they do themselves (I admit I have not read the PDF linked to in the previous comment yet, I just checked out F1.com).
i didn’t know the f1.com page existed earlier either.
i’m still backing ollie ftw though 😉
Personally, I think the FIA should publish them. They must observe which tyres the drivers are on to make sure they all use each type of tyre, so they ought to just bung it up on the website. {Duncan Stephen – 4 comments ago}
The FIA know which compound each driver is on at a given time because of the barcode system. Whenever a driver leaves the pitlane, the unique identifier tells the system not only what compound a tyre is, but whether it’s been used before (to check that teams are using the correct number of tyre sets or fewer). So the FIA even knows whether new or scrubbed versions of tyres are being used. In conjunction with the timing system, it should even be able to work out how many laps each set did.
It would be easy for the FIA to publish this information – but then it would be easy for it to publish the Hungarian GP post-race information within four weeks of the race occurring, and it didn’t manage that either…
Ditto to FOM as well. I am impressed with what FOM do though in this regard, and assume they run from the FIA’s stats (or a combination with LG, and I assume the FIA do the same, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the FIA had their own timing system separate from what we see on the TV, it just wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest). {Oliver White – 3 comments ago}
The LG timing system is identical to the one seen on-screen (though not, for some reason, the one on the internet – that may be using a connected system), which is why whenever we can’t see it on-screen, we get told by the commentators that it’s gone down through the pit lane too.