2016 Bahrain Grand Prix - Bahrain, April 01-03

[A-Bap]

Mercedes look like they believe they can do most of the race on the soft tyre to be honest. And the medium is a back up choice for the race in case something happens again (like Australia).

Interesting to see how close Ferrari are here, last year they kept pace fairly well.

Hmm... I wonder if they are trying to make up for lack of soft tyre testing over the winter? In other words stack up on soft and supersofts and just run them till no tomorrow in the free practice. Then for the race you go back onto the heavily tested, and mastered medium tyre.

Very interesting hypothesis!

[Unc1eM0nty]

On the other hand, I am sure they're factoring the risk of getting caught in a mid/lead pack train. If they feel that they're at risk for getting trapped like Lewis did, and need to avoid this at all costs, we could see them start on softs.

Overtaking will not be a problem on this track

[dans79]

Even with all the testing they did, I would still want at-least 1 car to turn some laps during practice with tires they want to use during the race.

[dans79]

Overtaking will not be a problem on this track

Rosberg 2014 on softer tires?

[Unc1eM0nty]

Overtaking will not be a problem on this track

Rosberg 2014 on softer tires?

Not really the same as getting stuck behind a long train of midfield cars though is it

[Unc1eM0nty]

Just watched highlights of last years race, Ferrari were very competitive - much closer race then I remember, all bodes well for next weeks race

They all went S, S, M by the way

[PlatinumZealot]

Even with all the testing they did, I would still want at-least 1 car to turn some laps during practice with tires they want to use during the race.

I get you, but at this point they have so much data on the medium, even from 2015, that they know how it behaves under all conditions. Nothing will catch them by surprise on those mediums.

[godlameroso]

Tire wear on this track is slightly higher than at Albert Park, so where they could run the SS for 16 laps in clean air, they'll be able to do 12 at best, most drivers will be pitting around lap 10, earlier for those that are trying to get an undercut. The best choice is to switch on to mediums and ride them for as long as possible and do a final stint on the SS. If the medium tire starts wearing too heavily for a SS final stint, then the soft tire should be used. Fuel weight affects heavily how far a tire can go, we saw in Australia that Riccardo could do 15-16 laps on the SS tyres with low fuel. This means that the final stint should be no more than 14 laps if SS tires are to be used given the higher degradation here. Going SS(12laps) M(26laps) S(17laps) seems the most reasonable way to go, stretching the medium stint would allow you to run SS at the end. The more aggressive strategy would be to go SS(10) S(16) S(17) SS(14), or if you start out of Q3 S(15) S(17) SS(12) SS(13).

*You could just do SS M M like said earlier and just push like mad the whole race and just hope for the best. There's absolutely zero chance that anyone can do a 1 stop, no way no how.

The tyres tend to wear more here because there's more high speed corners, however the wear tends to be more even. Where Melbourne only has 1 high speed left hand turn Bahrain has 3. The tires are stressed similarly however, with mostly medium to low speed right hand turns.

Brakes seem to be the chink in Mercedes armor, I hope for another good race, also call me crazy but I think we'll see the return of Alonso's regular finishing position of 5th.

[giantfan10]

Even with all the testing they did, I would still want at-least 1 car to turn some laps during practice with tires they want to use during the race.

I get you, but at this point they have so much data on the medium, even from 2015, that they know how it behaves under all conditions. Nothing will catch them by surprise on those mediums.

so does every other team since its the exact same construction of the medium that was ran in 2015.
makes the notion that mercedes somehow is the only team that can exploit the medium even more silly.
this race will have 3 dry practices and all the teams will have a chance to run every tire to see how it behaves at this track.

[PlatinumZealot]

They sure had much more knowledge running more miles on that tyre that is for sure.

It doesn't prove anything but some interesting words from Paddy when asked about the subject:

Mercedes raised a few eyebrows by focusing on the medium tyre during Barcelona testing, and it was therefore somewhat ironic that the team finished one-two in Australia a crucial decision to use it in the race. Lowe says there was good reason for that testing plan.

“It was simply mileage. We had a target to do 6000kms, on a medium you can get about 100kms, on a soft you get about 30km. With the fixed quota we were given we had to take all mediums apart from four sets of softs and three sets of wets.

“We’d rather have had more tyres from Pirelli, and then we would have added a lot more softs into the mix. We were getting seven or eight sets a day, if you want to do 800kms, you need eight mediums.”

The test schedule meant that Mercedes didn’t run the supersoft on the W07 until Saturday in Australia, so the team and drivers had very little experience of it going into qualifying: “We first ran the supersoft in P3, that’s the first ever run of it on this car. The times weren’t startling, but they picked up when we got into qualifying.”

[giantfan10]

They sure had much more knowledge running more miles on that tyre that is for sure.

It doesn't prove anything but some interesting words from Paddy when asked about the subject:

Mercedes raised a few eyebrows by focusing on the medium tyre during Barcelona testing, and it was therefore somewhat ironic that the team finished one-two in Australia a crucial decision to use it in the race. Lowe says there was good reason for that testing plan.

“It was simply mileage. We had a target to do 6000kms, on a medium you can get about 100kms, on a soft you get about 30km. With the fixed quota we were given we had to take all mediums apart from four sets of softs and three sets of wets.

“We’d rather have had more tyres from Pirelli, and then we would have added a lot more softs into the mix. We were getting seven or eight sets a day, if you want to do 800kms, you need eight mediums.”

The test schedule meant that Mercedes didn’t run the supersoft on the W07 until Saturday in Australia, so the team and drivers had very little experience of it going into qualifying: “We first ran the supersoft in P3, that’s the first ever run of it on this car. The times weren’t startling, but they picked up when we got into qualifying.”

So they needed mediums to run the amount of miles they wanted to and it had nothing to do with the speculation started by the Sky sports chearleading division of mercedes that mercedes were running that tire to gain an advantage from knowing all they could about that tire.....
on a more interesting note Horner from Red bull thinks that Ferrari's lightning start was more about Ferrari and had nothing to do with Mercedes starting slow.
Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen's stunning getaway from the lights at the Australian Grand Prix may not be a mere fluke.Red Bull boss Horner suggests the emphasis on the disparate getaways may be more towards Ferrari, revealing that he had spotted it was producing rapid starts in pre-season testing.
“Ferrari ran a lot closer to Mercedes,” he said when asked if he felt Ferrari had a chance against Mercedes this year. “

[GPR-A duplicate2]

So they needed mediums to run the amount of miles they wanted to and it had nothing to do with the speculation started by the Sky sports chearleading division of mercedes that mercedes were running that tire to gain an advantage from knowing all they could about that tire.....

So do you mean to say, having run 100s of miles on those tyres, lap after lap and collecting the data, wouldn't have helped them understand the behavior of that compound, more than others have?
Anyways, time will tell the answer about whether W07 has any advantages on Mediums, compared to the competition or not. Starting with Bahrain, a track that puts enormous energy into the tyres being a power circuit. Ferrari having chosen 3 sets, would definitely seems to be using it for the race. So that will provide a picture.
I will be curious to hear next set of excuses and, see the LIGHTENING starts of Ferraris, which will be useless on this circuit if they do not have enough in them to keep the Mercedes' behind.

[Vasconia]

Overtaking will not be a problem on this track

Rosberg 2014 on softer tires?

Not the best example , we all know that Nico has some problems to overtake Hamilton, even in he is clearly faster.

I cant wait to this race, its a nice track and overtakes are more than posible. It would be more interesting during the day due to the higher degration but its anyway a good race.

I hope to see Ferrari quite close to Mercedes, at least in terms of race pace!.

[motobaleno]

To proper evaluate tyre choiche we don't have to forget that the choiche have been done 14 weeks ago.
when no track data about the new cars and the new tyres were available. (not to speak about the previous race)

[FW17]

The tyres did not change from last year.