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Finely balanced between 2 and 3 stops in Suzuka

Here's something you might find interesting.

Motorsport Blog

Motorsport Blog

Here's something you might find interesting. The strategy for this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix looks quite finely balanced, with teams forced to decide whether to do two stops or three. And it looks like a weekend where saving a set of new set of soft tyres from qualifying might be worth doing (by doing one run only in Q2 and Q3)

Three stops is actually faster, as the graph below shows, but it requires the driver to pass the two stoppers in the final stint. If there is a safety car, it will hand an advantage to the two stoppers.

Here's your chance to play with the variables and see if you can find the fastest way to do the race strategy for Sunday's Grand Prix, using our UBS F1 Race Strategy Calculator

The green line below is based on starting on used softs and then taking a set of new softs (if you have one left) on lap 12 and then new hard tyres on laps 26 and 39. The fastest two stop option looks like being to stop on laps 14 and 34 for new hard tyres (black line)

However if you do not save a set of new soft tyres from qualifying and you try to do a three stopper with used softs at the first stop you end up losing out to the two stoppers (green line below)

It could be a good race for the Saubers and Lotus cars, if they can get extended tyre life, as they have at certain races this year. Time will tell.

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