What I’m surprised not to see conjecture on is the effect of green surfaces on tyre choice and wear. My belief unless persuaded otherwise is - on the unrubbered surface only the soft had sufficient grip to stop the sliding and tearing that the mediums suffered. The underbody df enabled the front five who started on the soft had enough to keep them alive longer than expected - longer than the mediums. When I saw Lando pit for hards I immediately thought “we’re done!” And we would have been were it not for a smart and timely roll of the dice and a new set of softs for the arrival of the rain. Lando was now the quickest by some margin while many also had to pit a few laps late. The reasons his tyres went unexpectedly to the end were three - the cold conditions, the track was getting a little rubbered in, and imo the extra downforce he carried kept the rears just in the window.
So lots of retrospective thinking for everyone except RB but when you run a Sprint format weekend at Spa you better hope you get no weather interference. Nobody really had a clue what tyres would work best but really there was only the tyre the top five chose - the soft. That’s it for the first half and after the “summer break” I’ll be looking forward to the next bunch of upgrades and watching from another country. Overall we have to feel excited for the McLaren near future and for some people, to have picked up a little humility and perspective from this challenging race.
