Overheating will be a crucial factor, claims Pirelli's chief engineer

Pirelli's chief engineer Simone Berra suggested that drivers will need to manage their tyres both in today's sprint and tomorrow's main race with overheating expected to play a big role over longer runs.

For the second round of the triple-header of Spain, Austria and Great Britain, Formula One's tyre manufacturer Pirelli has brought the trio of the C5, C4 and C3 compounds, its three softest tyres.

With the Austrian Grand Prix weekend running under sprint format, drivers have only 12 sets of slick tyres instead of the usual allocation of 13. Moreover, the condensed nature of the weekend means that drivers had only a single session to assess the behaviour of the different compounds.

Speaking of the weekend so far, Pirelli's Chief Engineer Simone Berra noted: “All in all, it was a fairly normal Friday for a Sprint weekend, with the teams in free practice doing several runs with relatively different programmes in terms of stint length and fuel loads.

"From our side, there were no particular surprises with how the three compounds we chose for this Grand Prix behaved. As expected, there seems to be no graining, but overheating is a major factor.

"Sprint Qualifying provides an opportunity to compare the performance of the Medium and the Soft in very similar conditions over a flying lap and the difference we saw today, of around four tenths, is also in line with our expectations.

Despite the heavily-limited amount of data, the Milan-based tyre manufacturer thinks that the two-stop strategy will be the best approach to tomorrow's Austrian Grand Prix.

"The most relevant data is linked to the extensive use of the Hard, by half the teams, which leads us to believe that that their preferred strategy should be to run Medium-Hard-Medium, given that a two-stop is the quickest choice. However, the other five teams have left the door open to run two sets of Hard or two sets of Medium.

"It’s worth noting that today’s times are generally a few tenths slower than last year’s qualifying held on Friday afternoon is similar weather conditions to today’s. Tomorrow, track temperature should be around 40 °C or higher and the Medium should be the preferred choice for all drivers, which will produce useful information for Sunday’s race," concluded Berra.