I think it’s a really challenging job
RADIO:
I'm losing power! It's going!
RADIO:
Keep going! Keep going for now.
RADIO:
I can't! It's broken!
there's a lot of adrenaline, there’s a lot of
on-the-spot decision-making
RADIO:
Aaah, good job guys!
RADIO:
I can’t believe we were last,
RADIO:
and then the last 20 laps on slicks
RADIO:
P4, Awesome!
to be set up here and make decisions
and see them play out 
it’s just an amazing feeling
RADIO:
Finished in P6. Well done mate, 
points on the board!
RADIO:
Woohoo, yes boys! Good strategy guys!
My name is Ruth Buscombe and I’m 
Head of Strategy for Alfa Romeo Racing
Race strategy is basically trying to facilitate
the best possible decision-making 
throughout the race weekend
So from the basics of the things that people know
the most which is calling pit stops,
when are we pitting in the race? how many times?
what tyres are we fitting?
but it stretches a long way beyond that
So here up on the pit wall we’re actually set up
to make all of the decisions here if we need to.
However we don’t really work like that,
so we have a team of 30 to 40 people back at base
in mission control in Woking.
We work with them live through every single session,
not just to the race itself.
In the strategies team in particular we have quite a 
large team back at base - we have a strategist per car
and we have a whole team are strategy volunteers back at 
base who are listening to competitor team radio
trying to spot things on TV that may be useful to our 
decision-making as well
RADIO:
Looks like some of the cars that were 
slightly quicker than us early in the run
RADIO:
are carrying more deg and falling back
One advantage we do have is that sometimes we are a 
little step removed from what’s going on at the track
so we can have a wide angle of what’s going on 
with everyone and we feed that information
into the track and our strategists at the track feeds 
that direct specific information from each car to us.
It’s about putting all of that together and making 
the best possible decisions
So for race weekends the strategy and the 
work that we do
starts a lot earlier than you would imagine.
We actually do quite a lot of work over the winter
looking at the races for the following year,
looking at what the key ones might be.
and that’s when we start
We need to select the tyres that we bring,
that we run on a Friday and the Saturday
and that happens 8 to 14 weeks ahead of the race,
looking at what compounds we’re going to run on the 
Friday, what you're going to run on the Saturday
and potentially what your strategy 
is going to look like.
We have to do a bunch of simulations
working closely both with race engineering 
and tyre simulation department
in order to try and guess which tyres we think we’re 
going to need all the way to the end of the season.
Now that will be dependent on what we think the 
track will do, also what type of temperatures
we're likely to get, whether there’s a good chance 
of rain or not, and also
how competitive we think we are expecting to be,
as to whether we need to cover to try to get all the 
way to Q3 or for other teams - particularly Williams -
they might make a different selection to 
try and get out of Q1.
So we have a plan from three months or two months 
to go but things can change over that period.
We may realise in the intermediate races that we 
are quicker or slower, we may realise
that we have power unit penalties at certain races, 
that it’s going to rain on Sunday,
and that all influences our choices.
So when we make those plans they’re very flexible
and those strategies we kind of adapt them 
through the weekend.
Sometimes you’ve committed with your tyre 
selection and you’ve said:
“we’re going to go for maximum qualifying bias.”
So at a track like Budapest - where it is the 
fourth hardest for overtaking of the season
where overtaking is very difficult - qualifying 
is very important.
For this event we’ve gone very aggressive
so we’ve got all of the soft tyres already.
There’s other events where you might take 
an extra medium
depending on what the weather forecast is like - 
so you really want the latest information that
you’ve got between ordering the tyres and 
getting to the race and what your competitors
have picked, which we find out two 
weeks before the event.
You need to make a decision as to
whether you keep that tyre
or you run it on day one
or whether you want to bring it through
to day two.
Friday practice is really important for strategy
because as we go as we build up to the race
we run simulations that basically give us a forecast 
of our expectation of how we think the weekend
might evolve and Friday is our chance to check those 
models on those expectations
RADIO:
Can you work out for me if we run the same 
downforce package as winter testing
RADIO:
with the same power output but with the 
conditions of today and the same wind,
RADIO:
just the conditions of today, what the 
difference of end of straight speed should be?
Simulations are really quite heavily important to us.
We have 4000 machines in the cloud that we use 
to run simulations live.
We build quite a complex model in the background 
that we use to simulate what we think
the race event might be. That includes our pace, 
the other teams’ pace, the tyre model -
as we discussed a few times- the overtaking 
model. So we run this off-line simulation
with all of the cars starting in what we think are 
the relative positions, and allow them
flexibility in stop lap and strategy. And we run 
hundreds and thousands of simulations.
Just to put it into context, for a single race 
there are more different permutations
or different ways a race could unfold than 
there are electrons in the universe, so you're
never, ever going to model everything so what 
we try and do is to be really smart about using
elements of game theory and machine learning 
to help us model what our competitors may do
and to try and always stay a step ahead of them
So we are looking at: is the degradation 
higher or lower than expected?
Is the tyre going to last 10 laps more or 10 laps less?
We also do a lot of work on our pace 
and the pace of others.
So do we think we’re going to easily make it into Q3?
Or do we think we are struggling at this event?
RADIO:
Can I get some feedback on the tyres at this pace?
RADIO:
Because the worst thing would be pace drops and 
we don’t know about it
And we factor that into what tyres we potentially 
have for qualifying and what tyres
we have for the race and 
set our plan for Saturday.
Saturday, the decisions we are making are:
how many runs do we think we need
in qualifying? Qualifying itself.
When is the best time to release the car 
in terms of traffic patterns?
Are we looking to try and get a tow from the car 
in front, or is it a track where it’s actually very bad
to sit behind a car because the dirty air will 
lose time? And then when you set a time
is that that time good enough to get through to 
the next part of qualifying
or do we need to do another lap?
RADIO:
Confirm safe for Lance. Confirm 
for Checo as well, Safe.
There’s also things to do with fueling for 
qualifying, for example how much
extra fuel do you want to take?
It's often you can’t take the extra tenth of lap 
time for taking this extra fuel with you.
So these are the kind of decisions we’re 
making on Saturday
On Saturday night if you don’t have both cars
into Q3 you also have to decide the starting tyre.
So we’re doing a lot of simulation work 
not only to base the race strategy
but also to decide what tyre are you going to 
start the race on.
So all of Saturday evening is basically coming up 
with scenarios, and running very detailed simulations
about how the race is going to unfold and then we 
start to plan different fall-back strategies such as
what happens if we gain a place at the start? 
What happens if we lose a place at the start?
What happens if this car is slower than we think? 
What happens if this car is faster than we think?
And even then,
during the race and before the race
it doesn’t really let off.
Even when the tyre blankets come off the cars
when the cars are on the grid and
we find out what tyres everyone is on we can then 
chop out certain scenarios that are not relevant
and really hone in on more detail.
But it’s also really adaptive so in the race you are 
constantly thinking, let’s say I’m on a one stop
and I’m doing an extending first stint, you’re thinking:
“what would cause me not to do the extension? 
What might cause me to pit now?
What would I do if I began to drizzle now if it looks 
like changeable conditions? If there is a safety car?
So we're reacting to all of that information together 
but trying to stick as close to the plan as we can.
In Formula One it’s only the race engineer that talks 
directly to the driver except in very rare circumstances.
Above that we have the Head of Track Engineering, 
Head of Strategy, we also have a Sporting Director,
Sometimes you only have a very small amount of 
time to make a decision, in which case you end up
having to cut down and you just go straight from 
Strategy to Head of Engineering who brings the car in
and the drivers come straight in.
An example of that is what you hear on the radio 
when people say things like
“virtual safety car window” or “safety car window open.”
RADIO:
Checo, safety car windows are open
That means that if a virtual safety car comes out
and the driver is in Turn 14 and they need to get into 
the pits by Turn 15 - so actually only have five seconds
they will automatically pit because it’s 
already been pre-decided.
One of the decisions that people don’t realise
that strategy is in control of is
what are we willing to give up to gain more?
For example if you’re in 11th or 12th you might be 
willing to take quite a big risk to get into the points
but what happens if you’re fifth or sixth?
do we want to lock in basically where we are? Do we 
want go for a secure number of points or do we want to
risk a bit more to take a bigger points haul?
And that is something that is constantly evolving 
through the weekend and through the race
and through the championship. As the year is 
evolving that risk balance is constantly evolving.
After a race what we typically do is immediately
after the race we’re going to have the debrief.
We'll print out something that is called a race trace
which is basically a visual representation of all 
of the gaps during the race,
and that will be there in the debrief for the drivers 
and for the engineers to remind themselves
of what has happened. Maybe they’ll say 
"actually this compound felt worse than expected,”
“I think this stint there was more lap time left in the 
tyres.” It’s also a good place to provide explanations
for things that there wasn’t enough time to provide 
explanation as to why you’ve done something.
We then have a post-race report
that's done in the first couple of days
after the race but it really depends
on what decisions you need to make based 
on the post analysis.
I think as a strategy team we are really connected 
to the end result on track.
You are constantly having to adapt because 
there are good strategists all the way
up and down the pit lane and we’re trying to 
stay one step ahead of them.
And I enjoy that, you know? There's a lot of adrenaline, 
there's a lot of on-the-spot decision making.
But it's never just one person, it's always a team effort.
RADIO:
Yes, guys, yes!!
RADIO:
Oh! Amazing job!
RADIO:
Great job, guys. I did the job on the start, you did it
on the strategy. What a team! What a team!
