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Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel has won a tense high-speed duel at
Barcelona, beating McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton in a hectic race to the
chequered flag, with the two separated by just a handful of seconds from
start to finish.
Such was their pace, using a combination of Pirelli’s new PZero Silver hard
and PZero Yellow tyres, that with 20 laps still to go they had already
lapped everybody up to sixth place with just 1.5 seconds between them. After
their final stops, they emerged less than two seconds apart with 16 laps
remaining.
The McLaren driver, who like Vettel stopped four times, set fastest lap
using the new PZero Silver hard tyre to challenge his Red Bull rival all the
way to the flag, ending the 307.104-kilometre race only 0.6s behind. The duo
battled with less than a car length between them for the last 10 laps,
providing one of the most memorable finishes to a grand prix this season as
they carved through the traffic together.
At exactly the same time, there was an equally close fight for the final
podium place between their team mates Jenson Button and Mark Webber. Button
eventually claimed third thanks to a three-stop race strategy.
Webber started the race from pole using the PZero Yellow tyre, but the new
harder PZero Silver tyre came into its own at the end of the race. The
leading runners all chose to use the new hard tyre at the end of the race,
due to the performance gap compared to the rapid soft tyre, as had been
planned. This however provided an increased range compared to the previous
version of the hard tyre, with the potential for the new tyre to run for up
to 25 laps.
The extra durability was demonstrated by Lotus Renault’s Nick Heidfeld, who
was forced to start from the back of the grid after failing to set a time in
qualifying. Heidfeld began the race on the new PZero Silver tyres, switching
over to the softer PZero Yellow tyres on lap 21 as part of a three-stop
strategy that took him to a points-scoring eighth place from last.
Just behind him, the Sauber team also ran a different strategy to the
others, using the hard PZero Silver tyres during their middle stints and
finishing the race on the soft tyres. This tactic also proved successful,
bringing both cars home in the points. Underlining the importance of
strategy, this was the first time that the Spanish Grand Prix had not been
won from pole position since 2000, when Mika Hakkinen won while Michael
Schumacher started from pole.
Pirelli’s Motorsport Director Paul Hembery said: “It was certainly a
dramatic finish to the race, with the battle between Vettel and Hamilton
going down to the final lap once again, using our new PZero Silver tyres.
Both of them drove magnificently, treating us all to a fantastic spectacle,
and it was thrilling to see such an amazing start to the race from Fernando
Alonso and Ferrari as well. Further down the field we also saw several other
interesting variants on strategy, notably from Lotus Renault and Sauber.
While it was a great race, we’re still not happy with the idea of having
four pit stops as three is our target. This was caused by the performance
differential between the hard and the soft tyres, which prompted the teams
to opt for a sprint strategy, as can be seen from the sheer pace of this
grand prix – although it’s interesting to note that the fastest lap was
actually set on the new hard tyre. We’ll be looking at that again in future
but for now we’re excited to be moving onto a completely different
challenge: the street circuits of Monaco and Canada with the introduction of
our new PZero Red supersoft tyre.” |
