Apologies to Big Tea for pulling his question into this thread.
Big Tea wrote: ↑16 Jul 2020, 16:51
This is interesting for those who are wondering where Albon's pace has gone. Is he driving to a plan respective of what he can do? Could he either be regulated by Honda as they would not like both engines to fail, or by the team and left as a 'tail gunner' to assess the true pace of catching cars?
If his job is just to finish a place behind max, he does not have to pace him
I think that if he was being used as a tail gunner, I would expect his race to be defined by Bottas' pit window.
Estimated time loss for a pit stop would be 21-22 seconds (based on the performance on the day). If you can, you probably want a slightly larger cushion, just in case.
- Verstappen pits on lap 24. At this point, the gap between Bottas and Albon is just over 20 seconds
This makes me wonder about whether the threat of an undercut was real. If Bottas pits that lap, he comes out right behind Albon*.
- Bottas goes on to pit on lap 34. It's interesting to note that from lap 24 until lap 34, the gap to Albon increases to 24.6 seconds.
- From 24 to 28, the gap increases by an average of 7.5/10ths per lap.
- From 29 to 33, the gap still increases but the amount it increases by drops steadily from 8/10ths on lap 28, to 2/10s on lap 32 and, on lap 33, Albon actually starts to close. At which point, Bottas pits the next time around at the end of lap 34.
- Albon pits on lap 35.
This looks suspiciously like Bottas is staying out until he's got a small pit-stop cushion over Albon and Red Bull are keeping Albon out in the hopes of making Bottas come out behind him. It might explain Horner's cryptic "He's on a different strategy" comment despite them being on the same tyres.
However, looking at Albon's times form lap 20 to lap 34, they are pretty steady (his lap times decrease by about 1/10th a lap (fuel burning off?)). If he was there as a spoiler, I'd expect him to start turning the car up to try and stay inside of Bottas' window as it gets closer to a 22 second gap (lap 25). Whilst the gap does slow and then reverse, that's not because Albon is suddenly putting the pedal down, it seems to be more a case of Bottas' lap times steadily dropping off as the tyres give up. It feels like Albon being in Bottas pit window was convenient coincidence rather than a premeditated strategy and that Red Bull didn't damage Albon's race significantly in order to take advantage of it.*
*&* I guess the big unknown is whether Red Bull thought it realistic that a Red Bull on old tyres could keep a Merc on fresh tyres behind with three long DRS sectors following tight corners? Given Perez pitted on lap 38 and given the pace of all three of these cars at the end of the race, pitting in the middle of the race looks like a viable strategy regardless of pit windows.
