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The combination
of Pirelli’s P Zero Silver hard and P Zero Yellow soft tyre is being used
for the final time this year, at the Indian Grand Prix: one of the fastest
and most spectacular circuits on the Formula One calendar, where nine of the
10 corners between turns five and 14 are taken between 200 and 250kph.
Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel continued his recent run of form to set the
fastest time of free practice: 1m26.221s using the soft compound tyres in
FP2, a tenth of a second ahead of his team mate Mark Webber. Vettel was also
dominant in India last year, winning the race from pole and setting fastest
lap. Pirelli’s compounds are all generally softer than last year’s
equivalents. So as usual the teams devoted the two Friday free practice
sessions to accumulating as much data as possible about tyre performance
with a wide range of fuel loads and set-ups, in order to help formulate the
best race strategies.
All the drivers used the hard tyres in the morning – where Vettel was again
quickest by three-tenths of a second – before moving onto the soft tyre in
the second half of FP2 in the afternoon, run with 38 degrees of track
temperature. Caterham driver Vitaly Petrov and Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo
were the first drivers to switch to the soft tyres with 50 minutes to go.
Subsequently, all the drivers ran on soft tyres to complete long runs on
heavy fuel, simulating the most likely scenario for the frontrunners at the
beginning of the race. Force India’s Paul di Resta ended FP2 on the hard
tyres at his team’s home race, as did Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher and
Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne.
The difference between the soft tyres and the hard tyres in India is
expected to be in the region of 0.8 to one second per lap but the situation
is made more complicated by the high degree of track evolution that exists
at the Buddh circuit as the surface rubbers in. During FP1 for example, some
drivers were improving their times by up to a second per lap as the session
went on, while Vettel set the fastest time (1m27.619s) in the final five
minutes on the hard tyre.
Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “With quite a
significant performance gap between the two compounds and a track that is
still rapidly evolving, teams have the opportunity to use these speed
differentials as a basis of their race strategies, which are sure to play an
important part in the weekend. As always, to get the best out of the tyres
the drivers will need to prioritise keeping them within their ideal
operating temperature here. Last year the winning strategy consisted of two
stops, but this year one pit stop might even be possible for some drivers
from what we can see so far. Both Red Bull drivers have set a very rapid
pace so far, but it’s the combination of speed and strategy that will win
the race on Sunday and at this point we never know exactly how much fuel the
teams are running. With the tyres coping with the demands of India very
well, we would expect the race pace of the top drivers to be closely
matched.”
Pirelli numbers of the day:
Sets used overall:
Hard: 48
Soft: 24
Intermediate: 0
Wet: 0
Longest runs per compound:
Hard: 19 (Kobayashi)
Soft: 23 (Raikkonen)
Intermediate: 0
Wet: 0
Pirelli fact of the day:
If Sebastian Vettel wins in India this weekend, he will set a new personal
best: the German has never won four races in a row before. Currently he has
25 career victories to his name (15 of them taken on Pirelli tyres) putting
him seventh overall on the list of all-time winners jointly with Niki Lauda
and Jim Clark. owever, he still has some way to go if he wants to beat
Alberto Ascari’s record of seven consecutive wins on Pirelli tyres, set from
1952-1953. |
