What you can do
Plan
Work out when to stop.
Pick a race and a car and see which pit lap loses the least time — for one car alone, or with all twenty on track covering and undercutting each other.
Singapore: the model said one stop, soft to medium around lap 28–34. The winner stopped on lap 32.Pit wall
Follow the race like a strategist.
Every car's tyre age, when its window opens, who can undercut whom, and where a driver would rejoin if they stopped now.
Also replays finished races, lap by lap, with the cars on track.Review
Change one decision and see what happens.
Read what happened and what the teams said — then move a single pit stop and let everyone else drive exactly as they did.
Would Hamilton have been on the podium with a stop under the Singapore VSC? One click gives the answer.See the pit wall in 90 seconds
The Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid, replayed lap by lap. What the panels show, how the pit window moves as the tyres wear – and the Virtual Safety Car on lap 14 that decided the race.
Every number in the film comes from the official timing data. Open the same replay yourself.
How it works
The library
Pit loss and how often a race is neutralised carry over from 2024–2026 — those are circuit geometry. Tyre behaviour does not: 2026 changed the cars and the tyre range together, so degradation and stint length come only from this season's races. Practice sessions turned out to overestimate degradation by a factor of 2–8; the races are the answer key.
The practice session
FP2 long runs give the weekend's base pace per compound and a warning when something departs from the historical record. Qualifying sets the grid.
The field
Twenty cars, lap by lap. Overtaking thresholds and driver factors drawn from nearly 14,000 close battles measured in real races. The undercut mechanics make the field stop early – just as in reality.
Live
During the race, degradation is estimated from the laps already run and weighted into the model. After 20 laps the race carries as much weight as the pre-race data – that is when the window is real.
The 2026 season – calculated, not guessed
F1 Strategy is a site about pit strategy in Formula 1 during the 2026 season. Here we work through what the teams' strategists work through: how quickly Pirelli's tyres degrade at each circuit, where the pit window sits, whether one or two pit stops is fastest, how much an undercut or overcut is worth, and what a Virtual Safety Car or Safety Car does to the race. Everything is built on timing and telemetry from real Grands Prix, not on guesswork.
2026 is the first year of the new regulations: smaller cars, active aerodynamics, a power unit where the electric motor provides half the power, and an energy budget the drivers must manage every lap. That changes the strategy – overtaking has become easier, in-laps and out-laps are driven with full electric assist, and the battery's state of charge affects when it pays to stop. Our model accounts for this, and is recalibrated after every race.
Ahead of every Grand Prix – Melbourne, Shanghai, Suzuka, Miami, Montréal, Monaco, Barcelona, Spielberg, Silverstone, Spa, Budapest, Zandvoort, Monza, Madrid, Baku, Bahrain, Singapore, Austin, Mexico City, São Paulo, Las Vegas, Lusail and Abu Dhabi – you can plan the race from the grid, follow it live in the pit wall view, then read our aftermath with analysis of the teams' calls, and simulate for yourself how it would have gone with a different pit stop.
Honest about the data
Public timing data lacks battery charge, electric motor output and Pirelli's C-codes. The energy model is therefore parameters, not measurements; the C-codes are entered by hand. Every figure on the site carries its source, and backtesting against the 2026 races shows where the model holds and where it does not – read more under About strategy.