Formula 1’s official tyre supplier Pirelli says drivers won’t have to go to extremes to protect their tyres as they have in some races this year.
At the last race in Brazil several drivers complained about how carefully they had to drive to protect their tyres including Charles Leclerc, whose strategy was particularly extreme.
While Pirelli brought its softest available rubber to Mexico, its harder tyre range this weekend should reduce the amount of tyre saving drivers have to do according to sporting director Mario Isola.
“Degradation is something that we need to check,” he said after Friday practice. “We know that everyone will try to plan a strategy on one-stop with a required level of management. Here we are slightly more conservative compared to the last few races so there is probably giving the possibility to the drivers to push a little bit more. They shouldn’t have any issue with the fuel. That means that there is obviously the possibility to have a race pace that is a bit better compared to some of the last weekends.”
Mexico was one of several races this year where drivers had to reduce their pace significantly to make the optimum strategy work. Isola says he doesn’t want this to happen but believes it isn’t only due to tyre performance.
“If you look at Monaco, for example, if you look at Sochi, every time we went [to] a lot softer compared to last year we can see that the level of management was a lot higher.
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