Strategy corner: Tactical uncertainty means F1 US GP is wide open

If you can’t remember what happened in Formula 1’s 2024 United States Grand Prix, that’s no surprise.

Last year’s race at the Circuit of the Americas was dominated by Charles Leclerc, who snatched the lead at the start and was subsequently never at threat.

One reason for the rather uneventful 2024 contest was the lack of strategy variety, with 15 finishers out of 19 running a medium/hard or hard/medium one-stop. Among the other four – none of whom scored any points – Alex Albon and Esteban Ocon ran effective one-stops, but sustained damage when colliding with one another in Turn 1; Albon had a first pitstop on lap three, while Ocon switched to soft tyres late on for fastest-lap glory.  

Pirelli learnt from this and brought a different hard tyre compound to Austin this year, with its selection C1-C3-C4 instead of C2-C3-C4.

This means there is a larger gap between the hard and the medium. Pirelli expected the hard to be some two seconds slower; high track temperatures mean it is just 1.5s off the next compound.

Assuming the medium degrades by 0.2s a lap – more than expected before the weekend – the hard becomes attractive for a longer stint, with Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola pointing out the performance crossover between the two compounds then happens after just seven to eight laps.

One or two stops, with all compounds at play

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

With temperatures forecast to exceed 30C during the race, several strategies are worth considering.

A one-stop is possible with a medium/hard strategy thanks to the white-walled compound working better than expected, with a pitstop between laps 20 and 26 of 56. Isola reckons starting the race on hards would hardly be an advantage, particularly due to the loss of track position on the first lap – hard-shod runners will suffer a 8.5-metre deficit to their peers on softs when lights go out, or 6.6m relative to mediums.

The Italian describes a medium/soft strategy (pitstop on lap 28 to 34) as “really marginal” with “quite a lot” of tyre management. Therefore, it is “probably not” the right tactic; a hard/soft would require the first stint to be at least 35 laps long, which is not ideal either.

Considering a two-stop strategy is reasonable, but Pirelli does not believe the hard compound will be involved in those, with the likeliest options a soft/medium/medium (with pitstops on laps 12 to 18 and 32 to 38) and a soft/medium/soft (with pitstops on laps 12-18 and 36-42).

“If you have the idea to go on a two-stop strategy, probably it is better if you start on the soft,” Isola said. “If you start on the soft and there is an early safety car, you can move to the medium and then medium again, and you have the possibility to run the race with two stops without a big disadvantage.

“Obviously, if you fit the medium at the beginning of the race, you target a stint that could not be five laps. It has to be longer, so you take a little bit of risk if there is a safety car or a virtual safety car, but it's also true that the safety car probability is not very high here. It's not like other circuits where the safety car is quite popular. But we never know!”

‘We never know’ is an obvious reference to Saturday’s sprint being neutralised by the safety car on two occasions, which was unprecedented in a dry-weather race on this track.

Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

So do expect the unpredictable. The undercut is described by Isola as “quite powerful” – with the likely caveat that this is true mostly for medium and soft rubber – which will inevitably be a factor.

Most importantly, teams are lacking information after going into sprint qualifying with just one practice session under their belt.

That’s even truer for a McLaren squad whose cars retired from the sprint on lap 1, missing out on not just points but also crucial data collection on the mediums that were used by everyone in that race.

With Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes such serious challengers on this track, and Max Verstappen closing in the drivers’ championship, this not-so-small detail could make the difference in the race – at McLaren’s expense.

Additional reporting by Stuart Codling