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Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg has
claimed pole position for the German Grand Prix. Conditions remained warm
and dry throughout the session, with track temperatures of 38 degrees
centigrade at the mid-point of qualifying. Rosberg’s pole time of 1m14.363s
was more than two seconds faster than the 2014 pole (1m16.540s).
The Mercedes drivers were the only ones to get through Q1 using the soft
tyre only, while all the others fitted the supersoft – reckoned to be around
1.5 seconds faster on the German track. From Q2 onwards, all the drivers
utilised just the supersoft tyres in qualifying and this is the compound
that the top 10 will start on tomorrow. Although yesterday 1.5 seconds
separated the soft and supersoft compounds, the gap today seemed to be
reduced at around 1 second.
Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director: “It looks like we might be
seeing a mixture of two and three stop strategies tomorrow, with the running
up to now showing that there could be a few quite different approaches to
the race. A lot will obviously depend on the weather, which still appears to
be changeable. Mercedes handed themselves a potential advantage by saving
themselves an additional set of supersofts, so it will be interesting to see
if they can capitalise upon that tomorrow.”
How the tyres behaved today:
Medium: Not used during qualifying but might be used in the race as tactics
will vary.
Soft: Used by the Mercedes drivers only to get through Q1: could be key to
the race.
Supersoft: Around 1.5s faster than the soft on Friday; around 1 sec. gap
seen in quali.
Possible race strategies and maximum laps*:
Pirelli recommends that the following numbers of laps are not exceeded on
each compound:
Soft = 29 laps
Supersoft = 22 laps
On this basis, the optimal pit-stop strategies predicted by Pirelli are
as follows:
QUICKEST
Three-stopper: three stints on supersoft + one stint on soft
SECOND-QUICKEST
Two-stopper: two stints on supersoft + one stint on soft (maximizing the
stints on supersoft)
THIRD QUICKEST
Two-stopper: two stints on supersoft + one stint on soft (maximizing the
single stint on soft)
SLOWEST
Two-stopper: one stint on supersoft + two stints on soft
Different permutations of compound usage within each strategy are possible.
*This information is provided just as an indication for media, based on
Pirelli data. It doesn’t form any type of guarantee for the teams, as each
team is obviously responsible for choosing its own race strategy based on
its own wear data.. |
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