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Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton
will start tomorrow’s Brazilian Grand Prix from pole position, after setting
a time of 1m10.736s on the soft tyre.
The soft compound was used from the start to the finish of qualifying. This
means that all the top 10 will start the grand prix on used softs, assuming
that it’s a dry race.
While the weather forecast remains uncertain for tomorrow, qualifying
remained dry in every session. There was rain in the morning though, with
wet and intermediate tyres used during FP3 as well as the slicks.
Track and air temperatures were considerably cooler than they had been on
Friday, with the session starting under cloudy skies and 21 degrees
centigrade ambient, plus 26 degrees on track.
Two stops look set to be the most likely strategy for tomorrow, although
there is scope for strategic variation and teams will also look to adapt
their pit stop windows to take advantage of gaps in the traffic, which are
especially hard to find at Interlagos. With the teams experiencing
reasonably high degradation on the soft in high temperatures, those who
choose to start on the medium could have a good chance to run an alternative
strategy with a longer first stint.
Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director: “We experienced track and air
temperatures today that were a lot lower than they had been on Friday, which
consequently had an effect on how the tyres behaved. The rain that fell
yesterday and this morning also washed away a lot of the rubber that had
been previously laid on the surface, re-starting the cycle of track
evolution. With quite a speed margin between the medium and the soft, we saw
just the softer tyre used in qualifying. This is what the top 10 will start
on, but with variable weather and relatively high degradation on the soft,
it’s going to be difficult to predict the optimal strategy tomorrow.”
How the tyres behaved today:
Hard: Did not play a prominent role today but could be used with medium in
the race.
Medium: Again, absent in qualifying but likely to be a key ingredient
tomorrow, if it's dry.
Soft: Used from start to finish in quali with a speed advantage of more than
one second over the medium.. |
