People of the Pit Stop: A Strategist's View

Discover the role of a Sporting Director during a pit stop.

While

all

eyes

were

undoubtedly

Max

collecting

the

Drivers’

Championship

Abu

Dhabi,

may

understandably

have

escaped

the

attention

that

collected

another

trophy

2021.

For the fourth consecutive season our magnificent pit crew won the DHL Fastest Pit Stop Award. Over the course of 22 races, we ended the season with 569 points, the record total, and had the fastest stop overall in 13 grands prix.

Plaudits, undoubtedly, will centre on the 20 team-members immediately involved at the sharp end of removing and replacing four wheels in around two seconds. However, the reality is that it takes the whole team to do a pit stop well. From a race engineer on the pit wall, to a radio technician in the garage, there’s a huge collective effort behind boxing clever.

In this episode, we’re talking to one of the people instrumental in getting a stop right: Will Courtenay, Head of Strategy.

Will Courtenay Joins The Podium In Spa

The head of strategy is responsible for timing our pit stops. It’s a collaborative procedure with buy-in from the driver, his race engineer, support strategists and perhaps even the team principal and chief technical officer, but the buck stops with Will, who is either to be found seated on the pit wall, or tucked away in Milton Keynes, watching the race unfold in the Operations Room.

In many respects, Will and his team have usually done their bit of a pit stop a long time before the call to box. In the day and weeks leading up to a race, they’ll have run the numbers on myriad possible race scenarios, eventually settling on the most likely plans.

These will be refined during the race weekend as practice runs deliver better information on tyre usage and the competitive position, with feedback from the driver, while weather forecasts firm-up and we find out where the cars will be starting the race. However, most weekends the team goes to a grand prix with a good idea of the likely pit stop pattern if things go to plan.

Making The Call – Shining A Light On Strategy

“Before a race weekend we’ve done an awful lot of work to try to decide when we’re going to do our pit stops,” says Will. “We do a lot of analysis, looking at previous years’ races, other races this year, to see how the tyres are going to perform at this next event, and then we run a whole load of simulations to try to understand what’s going to be the best strategy overall and the kind of scenarios that we might be in.”

It may sound a little dry, but the reality is very different, because it isn’t simply a question of crunching numbers: F1 isn’t just a sport of mathematics and engineering: it’s a human endeavour viewed through the prism of the sciences.

“A lot of it is statistic-based but, having said that, the statistics are only okay up to a point,” explains Will. “There’s an awful lot of grey area that we can’t model very accurately, and that is very hard to factor in. We will obviously listen to the drivers’ feedback. If they felt more comfortable on one tyre than on another, that might sway our decision, putting preference more towards one strategy rather than another. So, if we see a big advantage doing one thing, then we might convince the driver it’s the right thing to do. If it’s more 50:50, the driver will help influence which way we go.”

Passing The Pit Wall

The caveat there, of course, is that things don’t always go to plan. We have weather, and safety cars, collisions and penalties, but even here, the aim of the strategy is to ensure the decision to pit is not done on the spur-of-the-moment but is rather a strategy decision made coolly and in advance.

“For things like safety cars, we’ve already decided what we’re going to do before anything like that happens,” explains Will. “I discuss it with Christian, we agree it, tell the race engineers so they were aware we were in a safety car window. They tell the drivers, the drivers know if they see the SC board, they should pit or stay out. When the safety car comes out, I don’t have to say anything at all because everybody knows what they were doing. You have to make those decisions early: you can’t make them on the fly because you don’t always have the ability to react in time.”

When reviewing pit stop calls post-race, there’s a need for some mental gymnastics from Will and his team, as, to a certain extent, they need to decouple the result of the race from the efficacy of their decision-making. The perfect pit stop call doesn’t necessarily bring a reward. “I think, primarily for me, I take the most satisfaction when I feel I’ve done a good job,” says Will. “In Formula One, there’s so many eventualities out of your control, so the primary thing is to make sure you’ve done everything you can do, and controlled the things that you can control, and then after that, if you also happen to have a good result, then even better.”

And this is the crux of the matter: however, much of the timing screens and the statistical probabilities are driving the process, making the call to box always brings with it that thrill: the sense of rolling the dice, even if the weight of numbers heavily stacks the odds in your favour.

“How do I feel when we’re about to pit? It’s a little moment of excitement,” concludes Will. “You’re hoping you’re doing the right thing, because you think ‘OK, we’re going to surprise someone here, or we’re going to take advantage of an opportunity.’ That’s always a good thought. And then you’re hoping you just have a nice, smooth pitstop and everything goes well!”

Table Topping Pit Stop At Zandvoort