Interesting. Thx for posting. Not sure why everyone except Merc want all those mediums; it's obviously the slowest option, so why not just take the mandatory single set & go from there as Merc has done? Cheers, Ian
Yeah, agreed. But surely they're only going to run one set in the race? Maybe they want to get a 'feel' for them in FP, but I'm pretty sure they're not going to qualify on them. Cheers, Ian
Didn't Haas do the medium on the long run that got lettuce into 6th? Wonder if car setup differs on the medium and they want to run more FP2 time on the mediums to nail down setup?
Interesting data. Will also be of interest to see how the track temps affect all this. No testing was done in temps anywhere close to Bahrain's.
+1 IIRC, Merc were the only ones who ran "most" of the tests on the mediums - Suggests they already have the much needed data. I believe Rotaryrocket may have it too; Many "strategists" studying how Haas did so well and changing their plans maybe? That heat it could certainly get interesting...... Cheers, Ian
Ian from this - Mercedes, Ferrari opt for different tyre approaches for Bahrain Last years results on the following tire useage - Hamilton won last year's Bahrain race with a two-stop strategy, using soft-soft-medium. Raikkonen finished second using soft-medium-soft. I know there are differences in the compounds now from Pirelli. More uncertainty to keep us interested early this year. I like it!
I'm still baffled by Ferrari's tire choices during the race last week. They were on pace with Mercedes with the same tires, so why stay with super softs when Mercedes went to mediums? This guaranteed the tires would go away sooner, or would require another stop. It seems if they went with mediums, they might have won.
I don't think that would have been the case. I believe Merc have superior pace on the Mediums. I think Ferrari has a better pace on Soft and Supersoft, also able to get more laps out of the softer compounds than Merc. Ferrari had to make the extra pit stop to stay on the softer compounds and hope the Mercs faded on the Mediums at the end of the race. Vettel losing 2-3 seconds during the pit stop didn't help. Ferrari almost pulled-off the P2 finish, which would have been the goal if switched to Mediums, though the flip-side of switching to Mediums could have been worse.
+1 Clearly seen from the stint when Vettel was in front in clear air on SuperSofts yet could not pull away from the Mercedes on Mediums.
