Monaco – Race: Synthesis of Strategies

On the Monaco track, renowned for being the circuit where overtaking is the most challenging, the focus was mainly on tire strategy for the drivers. It was Red Bull driver Mark Webber who became the sixth winner of the season in as many races. A new record highlighting the closeness of the cars this season. Red Bull becomes the first team to secure two victories this year, following Sebastian Vettel’s success in Bahrain.

At the start, all the drivers except Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button (McLaren), Paul di Resta (Force India), Vitaly Petrov (Caterham), and Pedro de la Rosa began the race equipped with the P Zero Red super-soft tire.

With the threat of rain midway through the race, the drivers tried to make their first stint last as long as possible to minimize the potential number of pit stops. The timing of pit stops is always crucial in Monaco, to avoid traffic and because overtaking is difficult. A perfect one-stop strategy from Red Bull allowed Webber to convert his pole position into a second Monaco victory.

Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg was the first of the leaders to switch to the soft P Zero Yellow tires on the 27th lap, betting on weather without precipitation. The longest stint on supersofts was credited to the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo, who managed to keep his starting set for 40 laps.

Vettel’s strategy put him in the lead midway through the race and allowed him to build a solid advantage by the time he pitted to switch to super-soft tires on lap 46 for a final series of fast laps. However, it was not enough to keep the lead after his stop, and the German returned to the track in 4th position, behind Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari, who is now leading the world championship.

Jean-Eric Vergne also used a different strategy, pitting early on the 17th lap and moving up from 17th place on the grid to 7th position. He later gambled on switching to intermediates with six laps to go, after running 53 laps on the soft compound. Sergio Perez (Sauber) set the fastest lap of the race on soft tires, after starting from the back of the grid due to a driving error in qualifying.

The expected rain finally fell lightly 10 laps from the finish, resulting in a close finish similar to last year. The top 6 crossed the line in a breath, with only six seconds separating the contenders.

Paul Hembery, Director of Pirelli Motorsport: « Congratulations to Mark Webber and Red Bull. The team managed their race and tire strategy to perfection, winning Monaco for the third consecutive time and securing a second victory this season. We once again saw that the cars are extremely close to each other and matched in race pace, and this, despite the fact that no one had clean runs on the super-softs with a full tank due to the variable conditions in Thursday’s practice. Consequently, calculating the strategies was extremely complicated. But with the nature of the circuit and a certainly more conservative tire choice with very little tire degradation, it was clear that a one-stop strategy was the way to go. Of course, when the teams understood the performance of the super-softs, the stints were extended and limited overtaking opportunities. Although rain fell at the end of the race, our slick tires provided enough grip for the leaders to go all the way and finish as a group, with the top 6 within 6 seconds. »

[From the official statement published by Pirelli]

Summary of Pit Stops during the 2012 Monaco Grand Prix:

In order to better understand this graph, you can use the lap-by-lap summary from the FIA by clicking here.