Brawn sees strategy battle continue

With Ferrari and Renault having been locked in close battles for victory in the last two races, where the wins have hung on specific strategy calls, Brawn is expecting more of the same at the Circuit de Catalunya.

His belief stems from the fact that Renault adopted a more aggressive qualifying fuel strategy at the Nurburgring to join the fight for pole position, after being quite conservative with their approach at the start of the season.

"You have to find a balance, because if you go too far and you cannot establish a lead in the first stint then you become very vulnerable, because the guy who is hunting you down has more choices when he sees what you are doing in the pitstop," explained Brawn, who claimed that Schumacher's victory at the Nurburgring was sealed by stopping just one lap after Alonso at the first stops.

"It is alright going light and qualifying at the front if you can build a sufficient gap so you don't give any options to the guy behind. That is the trick - finding the right balance and judging the opposition.

"And it is not just numbers, because the optimum strategy at the Nurburgring was probably to go to lap 20 or 21. That, in terms of simple calculations, gave the fastest race, and then from that point you then move using judgement to where you think you want to be and where the others might be.

"We did expect a rebound from Renault, because they were clearly too heavily fuelled at Imola and had the fastest car and couldn't win the race."

Brawn believes that like at the Nurburgring, the outcome of this weekend's race could rest on just a single lap's worth of fuel in the race.

"Making that judgement on one or two laps is going to be critical," he said. "You don't really know where you are going to be in qualifying until you see Q1 and Q2 develop, and then you have to make a quick decision for Q3. That is all part of the fascination.

"You have a window that you set for Q3 and set some limits, but you don't really know how you are doing until you see things develop in Q1 and Q2.

"At Imola, for instance, we changed our fuel load when we saw how quick Michael was in Q2 and I am glad we did because it kept us alive in the race.

"If we had gone on the original fuel load then Michael would have been even further ahead in qualifying but that would not have helped us much in the race."

Brawn also has suspicions that McLaren's continued decisions to sacrifice qualifying pace by running more fuel to help them go longer in the races may be because they believe their car is not quick enough to beat Ferrari or Renault to pole position.

"That is the only reason I can think," he said. "That they don't want to do that, because they have some issue with the car. They have clearly got a quick car and they are clearly under achieving in the races because their drivers are getting bogged down at the beginning.

"So I assume they must have some issue on low fuel loads but having said that the car looks pretty quick on low fuel so I don't really understand their philosophy. Obviously they have got their reasons, I just don't know what they are. "