Fifty-Two Seconds

0:00 Safety car on lap 54: give up the lead?

Safety car deployed.

Brazil, 2019. Lap fifty-four of seventy-one. Max Verstappen leads. Lewis Hamilton is one and a quarter seconds behind him, on the same tyres.

At that moment, the pit lane is about fifty-two seconds away.

Should the leader of a Grand Prix give up the lead on purpose?

0:35 Verstappen and Hamilton: 1.26 seconds apart

It has been a duel all afternoon. Twice, Mercedes stopped Hamilton first. Twice, Verstappen ended up back in front.

Now they are both on medium tyres, nine and ten laps old. In fifty-three laps, outside the pit stops, neither car has been within a second of the other at the line.

Then the other Mercedes stops. Valtteri Bottas loses power and comes to a halt before turn four. The leaders go past the pit entry with no safety car out. Half a lap later, it comes.

Sebastian Vettel is third, twenty-one seconds back.

1:15 What a stop costs behind a safety car

At racing speed, a stop here costs about twenty-one seconds. Behind a safety car, the field closes up into a queue, and a pit stop costs only the places lost while the car is in the pit lane.

So the price is easy to read. If Hamilton stops, it costs him nothing. He comes back second. If Verstappen stops, it costs him one place.

The first one.

And in both garages there is a used set of softs, softer and younger than the mediums on the cars, for the seventeen laps that are left.

1:50 Stay out or stop: two roads

Christian Horner, then the team principal, called it a game of chess. As the leader, he said, the car behind will only do the opposite.

So there are two roads. Stay out and keep the lead. Then Hamilton stops for free, and comes back right behind Verstappen on younger tyres, with seventeen laps to catch him.

In this afternoon's timing, that looks like the safe road. Verstappen's mediums would be twenty-seven laps old at the flag. Grosjean, in seventh, is on a set that old right now. The only pass between the leaders came on lap twenty-three, with a tow and DRS open.

Or stop, and take the softs. Then Hamilton stays out and takes the lead, and Verstappen has to pass him on the track to get it back. After a safety car, DRS stays off for two laps. And the leader sets the pace until the race starts again.

One car will have the position. The other will have the younger tyres. So both roads come down to one question. Can younger tyres get past at Interlagos? If they can, staying out loses the lead anyway. If they cannot, stopping loses it for good.

The leader has to choose first.

Horner called it the horrible decision.

3:11 Hannah Schmitz on the pit wall

The person who says stop is not the driver, and not the team principal.

Her name is Hannah Schmitz. She is Red Bull's senior strategy engineer, ten years at the team.

Usually, she said, a team knows what it will do in a safety car before one comes out. This one was a grey area. They had been talking about it, and no one had committed either way.

In her own account, she was the one who ended that.

Right, she says. I think we should pit.

Almost seven years later, in a Red Bull film, she gives the moment. It was at the double yellow, before the safety car came out. She recommended pitting if there was a safety car. Horner put it in one line. She made the recommendation, so they did it.

4:01 The pit entry

Before the cars reach the pit entry, Mercedes tell Hamilton to do the opposite of Verstappen.

Verstappen turns in. Hamilton goes straight past.

Earlier this afternoon, in this same pit lane, Verstappen had to swerve towards the wall to miss Robert Kubica. He said the car almost stalled.

This time nothing goes wrong. Twenty-two and a half seconds in the pit lane. Softs on. He comes back about fourteen seconds behind Hamilton and about fourteen ahead of Vettel. One place lost, exactly as priced.

Hamilton leads the Brazilian Grand Prix with seventeen laps to go.

The safety car stays out for five laps, and the queue closes up. The time Verstappen lost in the pits comes back.

That was the bet. Horner said you have to be confident you can make the pass on the track. Verstappen said later that at the time, he was not sure it would work.

A sum from the timing, done afterwards, shows how short that window is. At first the younger tyres are worth two thirds of a second a lap. Four laps later, less than a fifth.

5:13 The restart

Hamilton has the restart, on mediums sixteen laps old. He slows the queue to about forty kilometres an hour. Then he goes.

Seven seconds before the line, both cars are flat out and Verstappen is about twenty-four metres behind. There is no DRS. Verstappen said later he had a good tow.

Twenty metres. Fifteen. At the line, ten.

The car data has Hamilton at two hundred and ninety-five kilometres an hour, and Verstappen at three hundred and thirteen.

Around the outside, through the first two corners, the lead is his again.

He has given it up for five laps behind a safety car, and five hundred metres of racing.

6:00 Younger tyres behind the leaders

Now look behind him. Charles Leclerc is on softs seven laps younger than Sebastian Vettel's, in the same car. For six laps he sits within a second, and stays behind.

Alex Albon, in the other Red Bull, is on softs four laps younger than Hamilton's mediums. The gap between them grows. From the end of lap sixty to lap sixty-five, nothing changes in the top nine.

The data cannot say what the softs added to the pass. Verstappen said the tyre advantage helped him stay in front, and both drivers named the Red Bull's speed on the straights. But in those six laps at the front, younger tyres alone got nobody else through.

What if Red Bull had stayed out? Mercedes' order says Hamilton stops. He comes back second, on softs, right behind a Red Bull on old mediums.

That is a sum, not a fact. And it does not say Red Bull had to stop. In eight laps on equal tyres, Hamilton never got closer than one and a quarter seconds at the line. On that afternoon's evidence, Verstappen might have held him to the flag.

And the sum ends on lap sixty-six, because nobody on any pit wall knew what was coming.

7:18 Lap 66

Leclerc gets past Vettel at last, Vettel comes back at him, and the two Ferraris collide. A second safety car, and a second queue. Nearly four seconds of lead, six laps of work, is gone.

What the queue cannot take is the position.

Now Mercedes hold the same card. Hamilton is second, on old mediums. They offer him a stop, he takes it, and he expects it to cost one place. The price Red Bull paid. It costs two. James Allison, the technical director, said they miscalculated. The plan, he said, was a quick pass of Alex Albon, then a go at Verstappen.

Same pit lane, same question, twelve laps apart.

Verstappen stays out, and wins the Brazilian Grand Prix by six seconds. He said the stop for softs gave them the win.

8:13 After the flag

A winning team sends one person up to collect the constructors' trophy. Horner sent Hannah Schmitz. He said it was right to reward her.

It is the first time many Formula One fans see her face. She said she was trying to take it in. She had just come back to work after having her first child. It was a big thing, she said, to prove she was still here and could do the job well.

8:41 The window closes

Schmitz has said the hardest part of the job is a decision with no right or wrong answer. After the race, she said, the right answer is very clear. At the time, there is only the pit entry, getting closer.

A lead looks like something to protect. Behind a safety car, it is something to spend.