See how teams turn tyres, traffic, pit-loss time, Safety Car risk and changing race conditions into a plan, and understand the undercut, overcut and tyre-offset ideas heard throughout a Grand Prix.
Content source set verified 18 August 2026Race strategy is the process of choosing when to use tyres, when to stop and how to react to rivals and changing conditions. The fastest theoretical route is useful, but teams ultimately care about where their car finishes relative to the cars around it.
Even an extremely fast stationary tyre change comes with a much larger overall time cost because the driver must slow for pit entry, respect the pit-lane speed limit and accelerate back onto the circuit. Teams refer to this as the pit-loss time.
An undercut means stopping before a rival and trying to use the pace of fresh tyres to jump them when they later pit. An overcut means staying out and trying to gain enough time before stopping. Which works depends on tyre warm-up, degradation, traffic and circuit characteristics.
