This is the episode I've been building towards. In eight laps, Carlos goes from leading the Monaco Grand Prix to second place, and he never gets the lead back. Nothing broke and nobody crashed. It happened in the pit lane, and on one slow out-lap.
Laps 16 to 18: the track dries
Pérez is first of the front runners to switch from full wets to intermediates, on lap 16. Charles follows on lap 18 and comes out third: Pérez has jumped him. Carlos stays out on his wets.
Laps 19 and 20: Carlos leads Monaco
For two laps, Carlos leads the race. But wets on a drying track are slow. Pérez's lap 18 on intermediates was a 1:25.2. Carlos's was a 1:32.0. His lead melts: 11.6 seconds after lap 18, 6.9 after lap 19, 4.0 after lap 20.
Lap 21: the double stack
Ferrari bring both cars in on the same lap. Carlos goes from wets straight to hards, skipping intermediates completely, in 24.6 seconds through the pit lane. Charles arrives 3.1 seconds behind him, while the box is still occupied. He waits. His stop takes 28.0 seconds, and about 3.4 of them are spent queuing behind his teammate.
The pit lane panel shows this as it happens, with a state the broadcast doesn't have: QUEUE. His timer keeps running while he isn't moving.
Still lap 21: the out-lap
Carlos rejoins right behind Latifi, a lapped Williams. On cold hard tyres, on the tightest track of the year, he spends about 40 seconds of his out-lap stuck behind him. Race control waves blue flags at Latifi three times on that lap. All three are in the log.
Latifi got no penalty. The stewards didn't even look at it. That same weekend, Ferrari was fined €25,000 for Carlos holding up a car in practice.
My honest reaction to this lap, every time I watch it:
Lap 22: Red Bull's turn
Pérez pits a lap later, with a 20.7 second lead over Carlos. The stop costs him about 18.5 seconds, and he rejoins 2.2 seconds ahead. His time in the pit lane is 24.6 seconds, exactly the same as Carlos's. Red Bull didn't win this in the pit lane. They won it with one more fast lap on intermediates, while Carlos was stuck behind Latifi.
Red Bull double stacked too. Verstappen came in 3.7 seconds behind Pérez and lost about 2.3 seconds waiting. He still rejoined about a second ahead of Charles. On these numbers, Ferrari's double stack cost Charles third place.
On lap 19, Carlos led the Monaco Grand Prix. By lap 23 he was second, and he finished there, 1.154 seconds behind.
Lap 23: the order that never changes
Pérez, Carlos, Verstappen, Charles. From here to the chequered flag, through a crash, a red flag and a restart, nobody in the top four changes places.
What I designed for this
In episode zero I wrote about six broadcast frames from these laps. Every piece of the story was on screen, and nothing connected them. This prototype is my answer:
- Pit wall cards that say what's about to happen: who is about to queue, who is about to jump whom, and by how much. They're my reading of the data, not real team radio.
- A pit lane panel with the states the broadcast doesn't show, like QUEUE.
- Auto speed: 10× between moments, slowing to 1.5× for the double stack and 2× for Pérez's stop. The chip in the corner always shows the current speed.
- An auto camera that zooms into the pit lane for both stops, then follows Carlos while he's stuck behind Latifi.
- A pit wall log you can tap to jump to any moment. In Calm mode, the whole story reads as plain text there.
Personal concept. Not affiliated with Formula 1 or Scuderia Ferrari.