2014 British Grand Prix tyre strategies and pit stops

2014 British Grand Prix

Posted on

| Written by

The red flag on the first lap allowed all the drivers to change their tyres immediately. Most of them chose to, but none of those who did remained completed the race without a further pit stop.

One of the drivers who made the most effective use of this opportunity was Daniel Ricciardo, who switched from medium to hard compounds tyres. He then put medium tyres back on as early as lap 15, and continued to the end of the race on the same set of tyres.

He fended off an attack from Jenson Button in the closing stages with what was technically a one-stop strategy as he only pitted once during the race.

“The one stop wasn’t planned,” he said. “We pitted quite early on the [hard] because we were quite slow and it wasn’t working, so we came in for the [medium] and, at one point, my engineer pretty much said ‘alright four laps to go on this tyre then let’s box’.”

“I said ‘the pace seems OK, the tyres aren’t getting any worse and let’s try and stay out or at least think about keeping me out there’ and he said ‘OK we’ll look at our options’.

“Then, a few laps later he said ‘do you think you can go to the end, there’s 15 or 20 laps to go?’, and I said ‘at the moment I think we can give it a crack’. And so, yeah, we did and it paid off.”

But team mate Sebastian Vettel made his first true pit stop even earlier which left him unable to do the same – something his race engineer acknowledged after the race.

“We decided to pit relatively early to try and get the undercut on the McLaren cars ahead,” explained Christian Horner. “Whilst that was successful with both the cars, unfortunately it put us out of the range of a one-stop with Sebastian.”

Fernando Alonso did the reverse – having started on the hard tyres he used two sets of mediums to get to the end of the race. The single lap he did on hards at the start was sufficient to meet the requirement under the rules for everyone to use both types of tyre.

British Grand Prix tyre strategies

The tyre strategies for each driver:

Stint 1Stint 2Stint 3Stint 4
Lewis HamiltonMedium (24)Hard (17)Hard (11)
Valtteri BottasMedium (1)Medium (30)Hard (21)
Daniel RicciardoMedium (1)Hard (14)Medium (37)
Jenson ButtonMedium (28)Hard (24)
Sebastian VettelMedium (1)Hard (9)Medium (23)Medium (19)
Fernando AlonsoHard (1)Medium (24)Medium (27)
Kevin MagnussenMedium (27)Hard (25)
Nico HulkenbergMedium (29)Hard (23)
Daniil KvyatMedium (14)Medium (21)Hard (17)
Jean-Eric VergneMedium (1)Hard (26)Medium (24)
Sergio PerezMedium (1)Hard (25)Medium (25)
Romain GrosjeanMedium (1)Hard (29)Medium (21)
Adrian SutilMedium (1)Medium (22)Hard (28)
Jules BianchiMedium (1)Medium (28)Hard (22)
Kamui KobayashiMedium (1)Medium (17)Hard (11)Medium (21)
Max ChiltonMedium (1)Medium (0)Medium (28)Hard (21)
Pastor MaldonadoMedium (1)Medium (25)Hard (23)
Nico RosbergMedium (18)Medium (10)
Marcus EricssonMedium (1)Medium (10)
Esteban GutierrezMedium (9)
Kimi RaikkonenHard
Felipe MassaMedium

British Grand Prix pit stop times

How long each driver’s pit stops took, Max Chilton’s very long pit stop was due to the fact he came into the pits when the race was red-flagged and stayed their until it resumed over an hour later.

DriverTeamPit stop timeGapOn lap
1Nico RosbergMercedes28.32918
2Daniel RicciardoRed Bull28.4830.15415
3Sebastian VettelRed Bull28.5580.22910
4Daniil KvyatToro Rosso28.5750.24635
5Jenson ButtonMcLaren28.6450.31628
6Daniil KvyatToro Rosso28.7000.37114
7Kevin MagnussenMcLaren28.7450.41627
8Sebastian VettelRed Bull28.7870.45833
9Pastor MaldonadoLotus28.8310.50226
10Valtteri BottasWilliams29.1040.77531
11Lewis HamiltonMercedes29.2910.96241
12Kamui KobayashiCaterham29.5071.17818
13Kamui KobayashiCaterham29.5401.21129
14Nico HulkenbergForce India29.5791.25029
15Sergio PerezForce India29.5991.27026
16Lewis HamiltonMercedes29.6791.35024
17Romain GrosjeanLotus29.7101.38130
18Max ChiltonMarussia29.7371.40829
19Adrian SutilSauber29.9561.62723
20Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso30.2181.88927
21Jules BianchiMarussia30.3532.02429
22Fernando AlonsoFerrari34.4106.08125
23Max ChiltonMarussia3707.6063679.2771

2014 British Grand Prix

Browse all 2014 British Grand Prix articles

Image © Red Bull/Getty

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

4 comments on “2014 British Grand Prix tyre strategies and pit stops”

  1. Is that the longest pit stop in F1 history?

  2. Whatever the strategy, we owe a great race to the choice of Hard or Medium tyres, that fabulous scrap between Seb and Nando would not have been possible if the tyres had been the softer, more degradable choices. Pirelli should stick to the Hard/Medium tyres for the rest of the season, the racing will always be better when the drivers can dogfight with each other without the tyres overheating and self destructing.

    1. Aqib (@aqibqadeer)
      7th July 2014, 8:01

      the problem with that is just that it doesnt work for some of the teams like lotus and force india who are lighter on their tyres the racing is much closer with slightly softer tyres but i wouldnt want them too soft (like 2013) maybe a little bit softer for next year

    2. Many teams and drivers have complained about the conservative, or ‘too hard’ tyres this year. You can’t just select the hardest tyres for every grand prix because some tracks will not work the tyres hard enough to keep them at temperature, or only the teams with the highest downforce would be able to which would exaggerate the performance gap between teams.

      But yes the harder tyres this race allowed the 2 stoppers to race pretty much flat out while the one stoppers could go to the end comfortably without tip-toeing round for 52 laps.

Comments are closed.