Spanish Grand Prix: How & Why

After another entertaining and enthralling race in the 2011 season, many people in and around the F1 Paddock are still 'catching their breath' as such, on the back of the Spanish Grand Prix. In order to try and make sense of it all, I have broken down certain key aspects from last Sunday's race, that majorly contributed to the final result after 66 laps of the normally processional, Circuit De Catalunya.

The Start

As is the case in the majority of motorsport series', the race start is a key factor in defining the shape of a race. This was empathised most noticeably in the Spanish Grand Prix, as a truly sensational display of reaction, technique, and race craft allowed home hero Fernando Alonso to fight and squirm his way into the first corner of the first lap in first place. This immediately scuppered Red Bull Racing's strategy, that almost certainly envisioned a race based around the conventional two horse race that was expected from there two drivers starting on the front row. This forced Red Bull to take a complete re-think in strategy; which was made all to obvious for observers to see, thanks to their horrific decision to bring Sebastian Vettel in for his first pit stop, before any of the front runners, on lap 9. Unfortunately for Vettel, his out lap looked to plagued by a queue of traffic, consisting most noticeably of Jenson Button and the ever struggling, Felipe Massa. However, during the second sector of his out-lap, Vettel had brilliantly made use of his new, fresher rubber to dispose easily of both Button and Massa, enjoying a much later braking zone in the overtakes of both the McLaren and the Ferrari. By the end of his disastrously positioned out-lap, Vettel had caught up to the tail end of Nico Rosberg's Mercedes, in which he passed using KERS and DRS at the end of the circuits 1047m home straight. Although Alonso emerged ahead of Vettel at this stage, it could be strongly argued that had Vettel not disposed of the three cars during lap 10, that he would have thrown away his chance to gain his eventual victory. Come the end of the first round of pit stops; Alonso continued to lead, ahead of Vettel, Hamilton, and a traffic engulfed Mark Webber. This complete reversal of status quo was the catalyst result of Alonso's blistering start line antics.

Tyres

If anything has shaped the start of the 2011 F1 Championship in particular, it has been the introduction of the Pirelli rubber; and the Spanish Grand Prix didn’t fail to further empathise this. With Pirelli introducing a new, more durable Hard compound tyre for Spain, the race dynamics were further altered compared to the seasons earlier races, with the importance of being on the correct compound at the right time being less important, and instead the factor of being on the correct compound, for the right period  of time becoming more crucial. For example; a key feature of last Sunday’s race was drivers 'covering' and gaining an 'undercut' on fellow drivers in which they were essentially racing. Red Bull had mixed results when addressing this:

Sebastian Vettel used the 'undercut' to pass Fernando Alonso for the lead. Vettel pitted early, on lap 18 and his out lap on new tyres was so much faster that when Alonso pitted a lap later, Vettel was through to lead the race. However, Mark Webber distinctively failed in his attempt to 'cover' off the efforts of his team mates first stop, pitting on lap 10 (one lap after Vettel), meaning that he had to endure an extra lap of wear and tear of his fading tyres. After exiting the pits, Webber emerged at the back of a queue of cars that had just been expertly dealt with by Vettel on his out-lap, and Webbers in-lap. Webber later found himself in hot water during his attempts to pass Alonso for third position at the third round of pit stops. Red Bull pitted Webber very early on lap 29, in the hope of surprising the Prancing Horse. Ferrari however had listened to Red Bulls team radio, and also pitted Alonso on lap 29; the end result was that Alonso emerged yet again in front of Webber, with both drivers having cut short the life of a brand new set of the much more favourable soft tyres, in exchange for the much less driveable hard compound tyres. After being on the softs for a period of laps much shorter than realistically ideal, Webber and Alonso found themselves way adrift of the Hamilton/Vettel scrap for first place, and instead drifting back into the clutches of a resurgent McLaren in the hands of Jenson Button, on his more 'tyre-wise', thought out strategy. As a result, the podium was locked out with Vettel and the two McLarens thanks to their wise outlook on tyre degradation and usage, as Webber finished a distant fourth and Alonso becoming essentially a moving chicane, in a lapped fifth place.

Drivers

In an age where team development and innovation are at the forefront of focus being placed on Formula One, it is often the case that the drivers themselves, the 24 men who withstand mind-bending strains and stresses both mentally and physically during a race weekend, are seemingly overlooked in terms of influence on the final results. The Spanish Grand Prix however developed a key reminder that the racers should never be overlooked come the end of a weekend. This was particularly relevant to two of the drivers during the Spanish race: Sebastian Vettel, and Lewis Hamilton.

 After the second round of pit stops for both Vettel and Hamilton in their four stop races, they were both able to extend there gap over the rest of the field by a considerable amount: Button crossed the finishing line a massive 35 seconds behind the front two just to give a rough idea of the shear pace and dogged determination of Hamilton and Vettel.

  Hamilton’s reputation certainly earns him his fair share of admirers and haters, but it would take a very pedantic and pessimistic man to agree with anything other than the fact that Lewis drove an outstanding race, relentlessly pursuing the Red Bull of Vettel throughout the second half of the race, on both the soft and hard sets of tyres. It's difficult to also bear in mind that 24 hours prior to Hamilton mounting a serious challenge on Vettel for first place, that Red Bull had smashed the Qualifying session with a huge 0.5 second advantage over the rest of the field. This therefore, clearly shows the massive difference in single lap pace and race pace, which was fully exploited by the charging Hamilton. Had it not been for a somewhat average final pit stop (Lewis lost two seconds in total to Vettel during the final stops), who knows? It may well have been a different story at the front...

It may be an overused cliché in modern terms, but my 'driver of the day' has to go to Sebastian Vettel. After demolishing the 'artificial' undertones of overtaking this year by passing both Button and Massa within one sector, without using either KERS or DRS, Vettel went on to put in lap after lap of relentless pace that could only be matched by Lewis Hamilton, who had a largely much more simplistic run to the chequered flag as a result of careful timing of pit stops and clever strategic predictions by his McLaren team. After emerging in front of Hamilton at the end of each and every round of pit stops, Vettel continued to push on, regularly stabilising the gap in between the two, before expertly demonstrating a master class in defensive driving late on the race, in a phase that Vettel’s tyres and KERS were both not working too the effective level of those on Hamilton’s car. After pinpointing his use of throttle off the penultimate corner, and making use of the Red Bulls aerodynamic superiority in the final corner leading onto the straight, Vettel successfully kept the ever 'racy' Hamilton at bay until the chequered flag.

  It goes without saying really, in a race that was arguably Sebastian Vettel’s finest victory, out of the 14 he has already acuminated in his short but prestigious four year Grand Prix Career., that the Spanish Grand Prix was won by the driver and not the team.