What you can do
Plan
Friday–Saturday: Driver calculates the pit window for a single car from the library's degradation and the weekend's base pace – one, two or three stops. After qualifying: The field simulates the entire grid lap by lap, with dirty air, the circuit's overtaking threshold and rivals who cover and undercut. The answer is your finishing position from your exact grid slot.
Pit wall
Live timing, tyre strategy for every car, the window from now, undercut threats from behind and ahead, where you rejoin if you stop, and the VSC/SC calculation. The tyre model is re-measured from the race lap by lap. Follow any driver you like – and replay finished races with the cars on track.
Review
Aftermath: what happened, what F1.com, Pirelli and the teams said, and what the data shows. Below the text sits Simulate – change one driver's pit stop and let everyone else run exactly as they did. Could Norris have won in Madrid? Click and see.
How it works
The library
Every race run in 2024–2026 yields degradation, tyre life and pit loss per circuit and Pirelli compound. 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 30,000 close battles. 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.