Thermal degradation will pose a challenge on Sunday, predicts Pirelli
After the opening day at the Bahrain Grand Prix, Formula One's sole tyre manufacturer Pirelli expects that thermal degradation will pose a challenge for teams and drivers on Sunday.
As was the case in Suzuka a few days ago, the teams will have a choice of the three hardest compounds in Pirelli’s 2025 range at this weekend's Bahrain Grand Prix, namely the C1 as Hard, the C2 as Medium and the C3 as Soft. However, the Sakhir track characteristics and the temperatures, will require a different approach to that adopted last week in Japan.
The opening day of the Sakhir weekend saw McLaren top the time sheet , with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri setting the benchmark in both practice sessions.
The Briton was the quickest in FP1 with a time of 1’33”204 while the second hour of practice saw his team-mate post a 1’30”505 to head a one-two for the papaya team.
As for the tyres, team adopted a different approach to last year. During last year’s two hours of Friday free practice there was no sign of the C1 compound, but this year's opening day saw seven teams send both their drivers out on one of their available sets of Hard tyres, the exceptions being Red Bull, Williams and Haas.
The breakdown of laps per compound today is as follows: 184 laps (19.41%) for the C1, 355 with the C2 (37. 45%) and 409 with the C3 (43.14%).
Commenting on the practice session, Pirelli's chief engineer Simone Berra explained that track conditions were very different to what the Milan-based tyre supplier and teams had experienced during the three days of pre-season testing.
“As is always the case at Grands Prix where part of the programme is run under artificial lighting, there are some free practice sessions that are more useful than others when it comes to drawing conclusions for the rest of the weekend. We saw that today with only FP2 providing useful insights for tomorrow and Sunday.
“Of course, all the teams had a huge quantity of data to work from, as they and all the drivers completed three days of pre-season testing here. However, the conditions are very different now, with much higher temperatures, if you think that at 18.00 the track temperature got has high as 38° C, whereas during testing it never got above 19 °C."
Although Pirelli brought the same trio of compounds to Bahrain as to Suzuka, but Berra expects tyres to behave very differently given the track characteristics and the high ambient and asphalt temperatures.
“The most important point to take away from today is that we won’t see a repeat of what we witnessed in Suzuka a week ago, even though the tyre compounds are the same. The track and weather conditions are very different and we saw from today’s long runs that the level of thermal degradation on the tyres, not just on the rear axle but in some cases also on the front, was very high.
"It is therefore easy to imagine a two-stop race, with all three compounds potentially playing their part. It’s no coincidence that, unlike last year, seven teams have already run a set of Hard tyres. We didn’t see any particular issues in terms of tyre wear, with a very low level of surface abrasion.”
