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FRIDAY TYRE SUMMARY
* Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas went fastest in Friday qualifying – which
will put him on pole for tomorrow’s sprint qualifying race that determines
the grid for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix. All the drivers had to use the P
Zero Red soft C4 tyre for qualifying today, as per the regulations.
* The fastest driver in Friday qualifying during sprint rounds is given the
Pirelli ‘Speed King’ award, which replaces the Pirelli Pole Position Award
on events with sprint qualifying. The name of the award is particularly apt
this weekend, as Monza is popularly known as the ‘Temple of Speed’.
* Just one hour of free practice on Friday afternoon preceded qualifying,
with the teams condensing their usual data collection programmes into just
one hour and running all three nominated compounds. The other Mercedes of
Lewis Hamilton was fastest in free practice, this time on the P Zero Yellow
medium C3 tyre. Hamilton qualified second on the grid, just behind his team
mate but ahead of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.
* Qualifying today took place at 18:00 – later than the usual slot – with 27
degrees ambient and 33 degrees of track temperature at the start of the
session.
* With limited running, it’s harder than normal to work out the performance
gap between the three compounds. The indications so far suggest around 0.4
seconds between medium C3 and soft C4, and 0.3 seconds between medium C3 and
P Zero White hard C2.
MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING
“As we’ve seen before at Monza, qualifying was a very strategic session,
with cars trying to benefit from a valuable tow on the long straights in
order to improve their overall lap times. The overall strategy was made more
complex by the fact that the teams also had to consider sprint qualifying
for the first time at Monza, as they are free to run whichever tyre they
like tomorrow – as well as start the grand prix on whichever compound they
like. We saw different strategic approaches in FP1, with the majority of
teams using three sets of tyres and all the compounds in just one hour to
maximise data collection, while Mercedes, for example, focused only on the
medium tyre: which might be a good option for tomorrow’s sprint qualifying.
Today’s qualifying was instead more straightforward than usual as the teams
could only run the soft tyre. This coped well with the heavy traction and
braking demands of Monza, also providing the mechanical grip needed in the
absence of high levels of downforce.” |
