Pirelli predicts unpredictable 2-stop race
F1 tyre supplier Pirelli vows that there are many exciting ways to approach the third Austrian GP in the latest foray of the venue. The changeable weather conditions made it hard to evaluate the tyre behaviour on the resurfaced Spielberg track, but the first signs indicated that tyre blistering and wear should be quite high in dry conditions.
Pirelli's sporting director Paul Hembery highlighted the difficulty for the tyre supplier and the teams to analyse tyre usage.
“Austria has certainly proved to be a very unpredictable event so far, and lap times before the shower that fell in Q3 were up to two seconds faster than the times in each equivalent session from 2015.", Hembery said.
"Both in terms of weather and events on the track, so we can expect this unpredictable theme to continue tomorrow.”
The Ultrasoft tyre proved to be the compound to be on during qualifying laps, but it showed very high degradation over race simulations. Pirelli expects two-stop strategies to be dominant in tomorrow's race.
"We’re anticipating two stops tomorrow and reasonably short stints on the ultrasoft, which are of course designed to provide the ultimate performance but at the expense of durability.
”We saw tyre strategy underway during qualifying, with Ferrari and Red Bull running the supersoft in Q2, which will give them the opportunity to run a longer first stint tomorrow. The final shoot-out was all about finding the right window of opportunity for the slick tyres to perform at their best on a drying track.”
According to Pirelli, the best way is to start the race on supersoft, then switch to soft on lap 16 and soft again on lap 44. If starting on ultrasoft, a change to soft on lap 10 and then soft again by lap 40 looks to be another winning strategy.
