The European round of 2023 F1 World Championship ended with a complete domination by Verstappen and Red Bull, and from here on, the flyaway races are waiting for us. The first round of them is here in Singapore GP.
The race was won by Sainz, who beat the four-way battle for the win, Verstappen and Red Bull’s winning streak has stopped. This race also had some very interesting elements behind it. In this article, we will look back at the thrilling race with some data.
1. Sainz’s defensive strategy using DRS
1.1 The Situation in the Final Stages of the Race
The most exciting part of the race began from when the Mercedes drivers pitted on lap 44 during the VSC and switched to medium tyres. This allowed them to chase down Sainz, Norris and Leclerc, who had switched to hard tyres on lap 20, with medium tyres that were 24 laps fresher.
Singapore is a very difficult circuit to overtake rivals, and it is even said that you need to be 1.5 seconds quicker per lap to overtake. However, if we assume that the tyre degradation per lap is 0.06 [s/lap], then the difference of 24 laps in tyres is equivalent to 1.4 seconds. Furthermore, since they ran a shorter stint on softer medium tyres, their advantage increased even more. Mercedes’ decision was to create a chance that would never come if they just chased from behind on the same tyres.
Fig.1 shows the race pace of Sainz, Norris, Hamilton and Russell.
Russell had dropped back to 18 seconds behind Sainz after the pit stop, but he put laps that were about 1.5 seconds faster than Sainz and easily overtook Leclerc on lap 53. It became clear at this point that he could overtake with such a tyre difference. And on lap 58, he caught up with the battle between Sainz and Norris completely.
1.2 The Concept of the DRS Gift Strategy
In that case, there were only two ways for Sainz to win.
- Run away with fast lap times
- Keep Norris behind by letting him use DRS
It was obvious that Sainz did not have the pace to do the former one. So Sainz chose the latter. Here, let us clarify why this strategy was effective.
First of all, there are three types of overtaking in F1 in recent years.
(1) The driver in front has no DRS, the driver behind has DRS
(2) Neither driver has DRS
(3) Both drivers have DRS
(1) is obviously the easiest to overtake. And (2) and (3) are much more difficult. However, (2) and (3) are harder than (3). This is because using DRS reduces the drag and weakens the effect of slipstream.
In this case, when Russell tried to overtake Norris while Norris was within one second of Sainz and using DRS, it is the case of (3), and the Singapore circuit which is already difficult to overtake becomes even more difficult to overtake.
However, if Norris lost DRS by being more than one second away from Sainz, Russell’s tyres would have been able to pass him in one shot. Then the next target would hav been Sainz who is running alone. This would also be (1) and he could have easily overtraken him and win the race.
Therefore, in order to prevent this, Sainz tried his best to keep Norris within his DRS range.
1.3 Sainz’s Strong Determination
Of course Russell was aware of the situation as well. To break this situation, it would be effective to battle with Norris and slow him down, creating a gap of more than one second between him and Sainz.
In fact, on lap 59, they had a side-by-side battle from turn 14 to 16, which resulted in a gap of 1.6 seconds between Sainz and Norris. But Sainz deliberately slowed down by 0.7 seconds to make sure that he was within 0.9 seconds of Norris at the DRS detection point before the next lap. Here you can feel his strong determination to keep letting Norris use DRS no matter what.
Fig.2 is a comparison of Sainz’s telemetry data for laps 59 and 60. The top is speed, the bottom is the time difference between lap 60 and lap 59 based on lap 59. Red is lap 59, white is lap 60.
If you look at the speed section, you can see that Sainz on lap 60 (white) is visibly slowing down at turn 2. From here to turn 5, he is running 0.6 to 0.7 seconds slower than his previous lap, which can be seen in the time difference section.
From this point on, you can also see Sainz’s determination, and how he carried out what he decided to do was refreshing to watch.
2. Only Possible with Excellent Tyre Management
As a trend in the last three years, Sainz has been close to Leclerc in qualifying, but Leclerc has tended to have better pace in the race. However, this time Sainz managed his tyres well in both stints, and was ready to sprint hard when Mercedes switched to a two-stop strategy.
As mentioned earlier, the strategy of giving DRS to Norris was clever and executed perfectly, but that would not have been possible if his tyres were worn out. Also in this respect, Sainz’s performance this time was perfect.
Ferrari’s race operation was quite good this time too, and if this is a sign of the Vassuer organization starting to work, then I’m looking forward to the next races and beyond. They may have their strengths and weaknesses, but in the second half of the season, Ferrari may surprise us with more challenges to Red Bull.
In any case, this race was one where Sainz used his mind, skill and body to the ultimate level, and it was a race worthy of the world’s highest level of motorsport. When we see such a race, we fans are moved and excited and mainly think “I’m glad I’m an F1 fan”. I hope we can see such a race again in the remaining seven races.
Writer: Takumi