Could Tsunoda have scored points in the Saudi Arabian GP?

After the first-lap security automotive at Components 1’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, three vehicles selected to take a strategic gamble and make their tyre switches there after which: Esteban Ocon, Gabriel Bortoleto, and Jack Doohan.

The three had all began on the medium tyre, however made the swap to make sure they may theoretically go with out making an additional cease – as long as they may maintain maintain of the laborious tyre by way of the rest. Ocon and Bortoleto determined to go down that street; Doohan made an additional cease on lap 32.

It did not have a lot of a pay-off for the three; though they made up locations in the course of the pitstop crossover, they may do little or no to cease sinking again down the order with the tyre offset accrued by those that had made their stops later. Ocon completed 14th, whereas Doohan used his brisker tyres to move Bortoleto for 18th in direction of the top.

There is a parallel world the place Yuki Tsunoda, having acquired going once more after his opening-lap conflict with Pierre Gasly at Flip 4, had no harm and adopted the three onto the identical technique. The thought experiment right here is that this: might the Japanese driver have gotten into the factors by doing so?

To map the hard-tyre degradation on a perfect race technique, we’ll take a perform of Ocon and Bortoleto’s laps to current the best-case state of affairs. The three who stopped caught as much as the again of the pack earlier than the restart, so we’ll place Tsunoda on the tail finish of that and begin our rely from the fourth lap.

Then we’ll work out a best-guess anticipated delta between Tsunoda and the mash-up of the Ocon/Bortoleto theoretical driver primarily based on the earlier races’ supertimes – Tsunoda at 100.838%, “Bortocon” at 101.932% – certain, this has Tsunoda’s Racing Bulls outcomes included, however let’s take the freedom of together with lowered tempo operating by way of the pack. In idea, this has the time loss to site visitors bedded into it, so we can’t alter that an excessive amount of.

In Bortoleto’s traces, there’s two factors of observe; between lap 21 and 27, he dropped time as he was being overtaken by the vehicles who had stopped; Ocon additionally misplaced time on this section of the race, though not fairly as a lot as Bortoleto did. We’ll not clean these curves out an excessive amount of, since this additionally accounts for areas the place Tsunoda might begin to come underneath assault from drivers on higher tyres. It is a conservative estimate, in any case.

To position Tsunoda behind the sector, we’ll add within the time underneath the protection automotive to make sure he is behind the pack, and assume he makes up the stoppage time whereas halted at Flip 4 again up to take action. Bortoleto was half a second off Ocon on the restart, so let’s make his hole over Tsunoda the identical.

Per the opposite laborious runners, Tsunoda thus takes a few laps to deliver the tyres in, clocking a 1m37.128s and a 1m35.791s as his opening two laps.

He then will get into the 1m34s, lapping fairly constantly throughout the bracket (apart from a number of 1m35s having contended with site visitors) earlier than stepping into the excessive 1m33s by lap 33. This nonetheless places him over a second a lap behind Verstappen, sporting new hards, though tails off again into the 1m34s within the last couple of laps because the degradation units in.

Yuki Tsunoda, Crimson Bull Racing

Photograph by: Lars Baron – Motorsport Photographs

Including his race lap information to the time spent underneath the protection automotive, per our maths, brings Tsunoda to an eighth-place end, having crossed the road at 1h21m50.586s, within the pocket forward of Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon – and about 5 seconds behind Lewis Hamilton.

In all probability, it is a very optimistic forecast, even when the degradation that Ocon and Bortoleto confronted by way of the race is of course included throughout the calculations of Tsunoda’s race laps.

Nevertheless it does present that, had Tsunoda not sustained terminal harm, there was an opportunity for him to make up the locations and wring a factors end out of the laborious tyres if he did not get fully swamped amid the site visitors. Aiming for the 25-second hole between Hamilton and Sainz on the finish, even with some larger variance in lap instances, would seemingly have been achievable.

It is not a method that might have, for a automotive on the high, upgraded a factors end into a greater one. Nevertheless it actually would have helped certainly one of them out of a jam had they arrive to blows on the opening lap and wanted a Hail Mary to get one thing out of the race.