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The boss of Pirelli motorsport believes that the deployment of the saftey car after Lance Stroll's and Lando Norris' crash forced the majority of teams into a two-stop strategy in Barcelona.
The safety car was deployed on lap 46 due to the aforementioned crash, which was immediately followed by a pitstop from race leader Lewis Hamilton. This was after the Brit started on the soft tyres, and then switch to the mediums on lap 27.
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However, tyre degredation was higher than predicted in the race, with Nico Hulkenberg expressing on the radio (before the safety car) that "it's going to be tough" to get his tyres to the end of the race.
“The safety car close to the end was the pivotal moment in the race when it came to tyre strategy,” said Isola.
“[It] effectively ensured that everyone did a two-stopper, and reset the gaps so that there was a short sprint to the finish. From the start of the race, it seemed likely we would see a variety of one and two stop strategies, with all three compounds in play.”
“In the end, it probably would have been quite tricky to one-stop, as there was some degree of wear on the soft and medium, at this very severe circuit in terms of energy loadings,” Isola added.
“Now we remain in Barcelona for the in-season test on Tuesday and Wednesday, when Ferrari and Racing Point will be fielding an additional car for us to test 2020 prototype tyres.”
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
C. Sainz jr
Replies (1)
Login to replydr002
Posts: 141
In the race we saw that the hards were no where near as racy as the mediums and that the time lap differential between the two appeared to make going for an extra stop on a softer tyre preferable to trying to go for a long stint on the harder compound.
Hence, I still think that tweaking the rule that a minimum 2 tyre types must be used during a race, to also include that the hardest compound must be used at some stage during the race, would liven things up.
Hence I reckon it would liven things up if the existing rules were amended to make it mandatory that the hard tyres be used at some stage during the race.
Keeping the minimum two compound rule and the rule that drivers start on their Q2 qualifying tyre would certainly give teams in Q3 something to think about in terms of what combination of tyres to use.