The Undercut & Overcut

When overtaking on track is hard, drivers attack in the pits instead. The two classic moves are mirror images of each other, and which one works depends on how the tyres are behaving that day.

1. 01

   The undercut

   You pit first. On fresh, fast tyres you set blistering laps while your rival is still grinding around on worn ones. When they finally stop, you have banked enough time to emerge ahead.

2. 02

   The overcut

   You stay out while your rival pits onto cold tyres. For a couple of laps they are slow warming them up, so you keep hammering in fast laps on your older-but-warm rubber and leapfrog them at your own stop.

The undercut lives or dies on the out-lap — the single lap straight out of the pits on new tyres. If the driver can get heat into them instantly and bang in a near-qualifying lap, the move sticks; hesitate while the tyres warm and the advantage evaporates. Circuits with a long pit lane blunt the undercut, because the extra seconds spent driving slowly through the pits give the fresh tyres less to win back.

The undercut is so powerful that it shapes how drivers race. A leader will often defend not by going faster but by staying close enough to cover a rival — pitting the moment the car behind does, so it never gets the clear-air laps an undercut needs. When two team-mates pit on consecutive laps the crew performs a double-stack, servicing one car while the next is already on its way in, a stop with almost no margin for error.