After a Saturday in which the fight for pole position once again involved Red Bull and Ferrari, with Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, it is time to try to understand what we can expect from today’s race. Over the course of the weekend we saw the tires affected by a high degradation which will certainly affect the strategies devised by the teams to cover the 66 laps of the Spanish GP. Let’s go into more detail through the information provided by the tire manufacturer at the end of qualifying.
Race distance – Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya – 66 laps
Pirelli’s strategic advice
Most likely, the fastest tactic to face the challenges provided by the Montmelò circuit will be two stops, but there could also be three, according to the press release issued by Pirelli. The best and most versatile option to start the race is to mount the Medium C2 compound, a choice that will enable the driver to go through a fairly long first stint. What to use next will largely depend on the tires each driver will has available.
The Soft C3 will provide a noticeable speed advantage over the Medium, but will have a shorter lifespan, and this may only make it attractive to those with good race pace. The Hard C1 could also play a key role. In his case the limit is the performance, about 1 second slower than the Medium.
On paper, the fastest strategy to tackle the race is Medium-Medium-Soft. The second fastest is Medium-Soft-Soft, and then there are also some three-stop strategies that might work well. Medium-Hard-Soft, sees the use of all three compounds and also represents an interesting option.
In Spain, the chances of entry by one or more safety cars are not particularly high and temperatures should be slightly warmer than on Saturday. All this, considering the degradation levels seen so far in free practice, could push the teams towards using harder compounds.
These are the words released by the motorsport director to the official columns of Pirelli: “It was a hot and complicated qualifying session. The management of the Soft was essential to bring out the maximum performance. Strategy also played an important role and Leclerc’s calculated risk of completing just one run in Q2 on used tires could offer him more options tomorrow. The degradation will certainly be a determining factor: the temperatures could be even warmer than those seen in qualifying, so it is very likely that this will be the most demanding race of the year for the tires ”.
“Management and strategy will be the key to success. Saturday was particularly interesting also for what was seen during FP3: often the work done during this session is focused on preparing for qualifying, but in this case we saw many teams trying to optimize set-up and balance in light of the degradation recorded on Friday” – concluded Mario Isola.
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Charles Leclerc (poleman of the Spanish GP: 1’18”750), considering the comments of Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies yesterday at the end of qualifying, could opt for the Medium-Medium-Soft choice, which could also be used by those who have managed to preserve two trains of yellow C2 compound. The Ferrari driver was able to preserve, through an excellent Q2, a train of new red C3s. The others, like Verstappen (2nd) and Sainz (3rd), just to give some examples, should they choose to adopt the same strategy they would find themselves having to use a train of Soft used in the final stint.
Those who decide to make three stops will probably choose a strategy that will involve the use of two Medium and two Soft sets. In what order, this is all to be seen. Given the heat, it would be wiser to leave the softer compounds for the final part of the race as temperatures will gradually decrease.
It goes without saying that given the high degradation, stopping before the others will be of vital importance to maintain or gain positions on the opponents. The undercut will be very powerful, especially in the transition from Medium to Soft.
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