One stop or two stop?

Question

In general, the F1 community say that the quickest way to finish a race is to have a two stop strategy.
Having said that, why is it that when a driver takes a grid penalty (ie, dropped 10 places on the grid), his car is always filled up with fuel and he is put on a one stop strategy and he always ends up finishing quite high up and beating alot of the drivers that are two stopping? It can't be put down to the tyre performance because surely one stopping tyres would be under more stress and would have more tyre wear?
Or is it just a case of the other cars just being "slower"?

Answer 1

Fuel strategy will depend on many elements: the track and how long the pit entry and exit are (the longer they are, the more time will need to be spent in the pits on each stop), tire selection and what the teams observed in tire wear during practice (if the fastest tires cannot stand the weight of the extra fuel then you have to choose between a slower tire or more stops), and of course what you expect the other teams to do. From all of that you wind up with what is the best strategy to run your fastest.

However, if you wind up at the back of the grid for some reason (or starting from pit lane), all of that goes out the window. If you are a front runner to start with, you will be faster than the back of the grid... and will be faster still even when very heavy with fuel. Heavy fuel or not, passing will still be about the same difficulty, but by running heavy on fuel and doing fewer stops, you'll have the chance to move past more cars and have a shot at getting into the points.

This is not a strategy that will likely yield a winning or even podium result, but it is the best way to salvage a race weekend when you wind up at the back (if you have the pace to begin with). Drivers/cars that start at the back of the grid, and the ones you expect to see start back there sometimes use this stategy as well, but it generally results in their being able to move past one or maybe two other back markers over the race, or get nothing better at all or even fall back. This is only a way to move past slower cars and move up towards the points.

Answer 2

The two gents before me have answered your question pretty well. What I can add is the pit stop summary as posted on the formula1.com website.
Massa spent a total of 27.97 sec for his single pit stop (this includes the time spent stationary and receiving fuel, getting new tyres etc PLUS the time spent in the pit lane).
Most of the two-stoppers spent around 44 to 50 seconds.
So, from the pit stop alone, he gained 16 to 22 seconds.
Having said that, being on worn tyres towards the end of each stint and heavy fuel at the beginning of each would have hurt his lap times (by up to 2 - 3 seconds a lap), so one stopping is not necessarily the cure for a bad grid position. You need a good car, good driver, and good luck to get into the points if you were to start from the back of the grid. Felipe did reasonably well, I think. His fastest lap time by the way was 1.8 seconds off the pace of Raikkonen's.

Answer 3

It's better to run faster on a lighter fuel load and optimize the tires than it is to run a heavy car longer and drive more conservatively. You will never win a race with that strategy, but you can gain a lot of positions if you have a fast car and you are at the back of the pack. The reason the back markers don't do it is because they naturally have slower cars. Basically the strategy is to gain more positions from the extra pit stops of slower cars. More pit stops than 2 would only be good if you are leading a race and have a huge lead because you are running light and burning up tires. It won't work if you are stuck behind traffic, which is why you will always see drivers running light try to pass early to take advantage of the light load so they can stay ahead, i.e; Nick Heidfeld this weekend. Also, take for example what Michael Schumacher did in France 2 years ago (I think). He pit 4 times so that he could run lighting fast laps and retain the lead to win the race. It's one of those things that you can only pull off with the right combination of Driver & Car. That's why the one stopper worked so well for Massa in Australia, and the four stopper work so well for Schumi in France.