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The Japanese
Grand Prix lived up to its action-packed reputation, with plenty of
overtaking and a wide variety of tyre strategies at work. A two-stop
soft-hard-hard strategy proved to be the most popular option, used by all
the top three.
Nico Rosberg won the race after making a perfect start from pole and
resisting attempts by the Red Bull drivers to ‘undercut’ him by making their
first pit stops early. The other Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton stayed out
slightly longer to gain track position, eventually finishing third after
slipping down to eighth following a poor start.
At the final pit stops he got past Vettel, who ran the soft tyres for his
final stint. Hamilton used the extra durability of the hard tyres to
challenge Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for second in the closing stages,
setting up an unpredictable finale.
Not everybody followed the two-stop strategy though: Williams drivers
Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa stopped only once and both finished in the
points. Both Renaults and Sauber's also stopped only once.
All three tyre compounds were seen at the start of the race, with the top 10
all starting on soft's, while the one-stoppers began on either the medium or
the hard tyre. Force India was the only team to use all three compounds
during the race.
Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director: “There was plenty of
overtaking and tactics at work in Suzuka, with the three compounds we made
available providing a wide variety of options when it came to how to run the
strategy. The dry weather and absence of safety cars meant that we had two
stops for most of the field, but there were some other options that worked
well too, including a one-stopper at one of the most demanding circuits of
the year in terms of tyre usage. Congratulations to Mercedes for another
constructors’ title.”
Truthometer: On Saturday a three-stop strategy looked to be
theoretically fastest. Instead, Nico Rosberg used two stops to win the grand
prix, starting on the used soft's, stopping after 12 laps for hards and after
29 laps for hards again. |
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