2024 Dutch GP Data Debrief

Formula 1 roared back from the Summer Break with an incredible race. It's now apparent that two teams are vying for the World Constructor’s Championship, with McLaren trailing just 30 points behind the leading team, Red Bull Racing. At the Circuit Zandvoort, McLaren’s Lando Norris made a powerful statement by clinching a victory with a commanding 22-second lead – the largest winning margin of the season so far. Earlier in the weekend, Norris secured the pole position for the race, edging out Max Verstappen by 0.356 seconds, ending Verstappen's streak of pole positions since the circuit returned to the F1 calendar in 2021. Let's dig into the race with some data.

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At the start of the race, Lando had a bad start again and lost the position to Max. Both the drivers had the exact reaction time but Lando gave in too much throttle which caused wheel spin on his rear tyres. He then tried to reduce it by reducing the throttle input but by that time Max was long gone ahead of him. Piastri had the same issue and lost his position to Russell.

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This is the race gap aggregate chart of the drivers in the race.

After overtaking, Norris had confidence in himself and his car's ability to overtake Max on the track. However, he made sure not to strain his tyres while attempting to regain that position. For the first 12-13 laps, he maintained a gap of 1.2 - 1.3 seconds behind Max to avoid the dirty air and preserve his tyres. Once Max's tyres started to degrade, he overtook him on the track and built a substantial lead ahead.

In the race, the Sauber once again demonstrated that it was the slowest car on the grid, with both drivers finishing in 19th and 20th positions. The upgraded Williams showed improved performance as Albon progressed to 14th place after starting last on the grid. This was due to his disqualification from Saturday’s Qualifying session, where he originally finished in 8th position. The Astons had a poor outing after starting at 7th and 8th, they finished at 10th and 13th respectively.

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The image above displays the race gap aggregate for the top 10 drivers. Lando Norris's McLaren had a better pace in free air compared to Max and his Red Bull. After the pitstop, Norris increased his lead over Max from 5 seconds to 22 seconds by the end of the race. McLaren's tyre management was evident when Norris set the fastest lap on the last lap while using 43-lap old Hard tyres.

The only downside for McLaren in this race was its second driver, Oscar Piastri. McLaren tried to extend his first stint on medium tyres in the hopes of matching Norris's pace in free air. They thought fresher tyres would help him pass other drivers and reach the podium. However, Piastri was not able to deliver the expected lap times. Despite being 9 laps fresher than Leclerc, Piastri couldn't overtake him, showing that Leclerc deserved to be the lead driver of Ferrari. Ferrari had an average qualifying pace but showed great race pace, with both drivers gaining positions. Leclerc gained 3 places while Sainz gained 5 positions, starting from 10th on the grid.

Mercedes had an average day overall. Lewis Hamilton had 2 new sets of soft tyres left as he got eliminated in Q2, starting 11th. However, a later ruling by the stewards caused him to start 14th on the grid as he was found guilty of impeding Perez during his cooldown lap. Hamilton showed his class when he extended his first stint on soft tyres to 23 laps, gaining multiple places. While many thought that Mercedes would revert to a 1-stop race after his long stint on the soft tyres, they decided to revert to a 2-stop race when Mercedes put a fresh soft tyre on lap 48. He finished 8th, extracting the performance of his car. Russell, who overtook Piastri to take the 3rd position on the first lap, couldn't match the pace of his rivals. Leclerc was able to undercut him and gain the position due to a slow pitstop. Mercedes later put him on a set of used soft tyres in hopes of catching Perez and overtaking him to gain some positions back, but Russell was unable to do so.

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The graph above displays the fuel-corrected lap times for Norris, Max, and Perez. Fuel-corrected lap times are calculated by subtracting the time penalty added to each lap due to the amount of fuel carried by the car. Analysing fuel-corrected lap times provides a better understanding of the tyre degradation rate and helps evaluate which driver was more consistent throughout the stint and effectively managed their tyres. It is apparent that during the initial laps, Norris had lap times similar to Max; however, after lap 15, Max's tyres started degrading faster, allowing Norris to overtake him on lap 17. Max's tyre degradation shows a steeper gradient compared to Norris's. One possible reason for Max's heavy tyre degradation could be attributed to him using an older floor spec, although it is currently unknown how this would affect tyre degradation.

In the second stint, Max and Norris have a similar gradient, but Norris is consistently faster than Max every lap. Interestingly, Max and Perez have similar lap times during the second stint. The laps where Perez is slower are the ones where he was overtaken by Sainz and a few laps in traffic. Perez was slower than Max in the first stint, possibly because Max was driving in clear air while Perez had to drive in traffic. This shows how driving in traffic can make it more difficult to minimize car sliding, which can cause tyres to overheat and wear out faster. It can also make it harder to push as hard in corners, causing the following car to slow down and fall further behind.

The chart above displays the fuel-corrected Stint analysis for the top 10 drivers in the race. Norris's McLaren was the fastest car in both stints, while Piastri in the other McLaren was significantly slower than Norris in both stints. In the first stint, Max and Perez were 3-tenths off, but consistently lapping within 1.5-tenths of each other in the second stint. Leclerc and Sainz had better second stints when lapping in free air. Hamilton had a slower first stint on the softs driving in traffic and making up places. During his second and third stints in relatively free air, he was much faster than the other drivers. Additionally, Hamilton had a lower average lap time during his second stint on hard tyres because he only did 25 laps, while the other drivers did around 39-45 laps on the hard tyres.

That was the end of the 1st race after the summer break. The next race will be at Monza, Italy at the Circuit of Speed where teams would bring a very low downforce package to increase the top speed of their cars. Please do let me know your thoughts in the comments. See you next week after “It is lights out and away we go!”