Bahrain – Race: Strategy Summary

Benefiting from the best tire strategy was essential for Sebastian Vettel to secure his first victory of the season at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The Red Bull driver opted for a three-stop strategy to claim the 22nd win of his career, starting from pole position. After the first four races, there have been as many different winners, and Vettel takes the lead in the World Drivers’ Championship at the end of this weekend.

The German driver started the race on Yellow soft P Zero tires, then switched to White medium P Zeros after 11 laps, and completed his final stints on soft and then medium P Zeros.

Bahrain is one of the most demanding circuits of the season in terms of tire degradation, due to the dirty track and numerous low and medium-speed corners that require a lot from the tires in terms of traction.

Therefore, knowing how to use the tires correctly and manage thermal degradation was vital during the 57 laps of the race, although the Grand Prix took place under relatively cool conditions for the location, with significant wind and track temperatures of around 32°C.

The majority of the drivers adopted a three-stop strategy, with Paul di Resta’s Force India opting for only two stops. The Scotsman executed a final stint on medium tires for 24 laps to finish sixth, after starting from 10th on the grid, and without completing a run in Q3 to preserve his tires. Di Resta finished just behind Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes, who chose to do only one run in Q3 to save a set of soft tires.

The Lotus driver and former World Champion Kimi Räikkönen, who started 11th and did not make it to Q3, was able to save several sets of new tires for the race and used this advantage wisely, even posing a threat in medium tires to Sebastian Vettel’s lead, who was on softs. Both stopped in the same lap for their last stint and finished the race on mediums. After getting his tires up to temperature, Vettel managed to pull away from the Lotus driver, but Räikkönen caught up with him at the end of the race after conserving his tires at the start of his stint.

The Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher also used a three-stop strategy to climb through the field, finishing in the points after starting from 22nd position on the grid due to a penalty for a gearbox change, which set him even further back from the others.

Paul Hembery, Director of Pirelli Motorsport:

« It was certainly a technical challenge during this race, on a circuit where we had never raced before. Nevertheless, we chose to bring the soft compounds as well as the medium to provide numerous strategic opportunities. Although degradation was a factor in the race, which was already evident with the tactics adopted in qualifying, the tires performed extremely well against the demands placed on them. Towards the end of the race, the priority for the drivers was to ensure that the tires did not drop from the peak of the performance window; a task they managed quite well. The closeness of the race this year, with a reduction in performance gaps between our compounds, is reflected by the fact that we saw four different winners in four races. It was also a great result for Lotus, with both their cars on the podium, and the first for our former test driver Romain Grosjean, who was with us when we conducted tests in Bahrain in 2010. His experience was clearly useful to him. As for Kimi, he seems to have digested the transition between our rally tires and the P Zero race tires quite well! »

[From the official press release published by Pirelli]

Summary of Pit Stops during the 2012 Bahrain Grand Prix:

To better understand this graph, you can use the lap-by-lap analysis from the FIA by clicking here.