Ferrari have chosen more super-soft tyres than Mercedes for next week’s Chinese Grand Prix.
Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen will have six sets of the softest rubber available compared to five for the Mercedes pair. Lewis Hamilton is alone among the four leading drivers in opting for four sets of the medium compound rubber.
Williams, McLaren and Haas have all opted to take seven sets of the softest available rubber.
The top four drivers in last year’s race all used two sets of soft tyres followed by a set of mediums.
| Driver | Team | Tyres |
|---|---|---|
| Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes |    |
| Nico Rosberg | Mercedes | |
| Sebastian Vettel | Ferrari | |
| Kimi Raikkonen | Ferrari | |
| Valtteri Bottas | Williams | |
| Felipe Massa | Williams | |
| Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull | |
| Daniil Kvyat | Red Bull | |
| Nico Hulkenberg | Force India | |
| Sergio Perez | Force India | |
| Kevin Magnussen | Renault | |
| Jolyon Palmer | Renault | |
| Max Verstappen | Toro Rosso | |
| Carlos Sainz Jnr | Toro Rosso | |
| Fernando Alonso | McLaren | |
| Jenson Button | McLaren | |
| Marcus Ericsson | Sauber | |
| Felipe Nasr | Sauber | |
| Pascal Wehrlein | Manor | |
| Rio Haryanto | Manor | |
| Romain Grosjean | Haas | |
| Esteban Gutierrez | Haas | |
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anonymouscoward (@anonymouscoward)
5th April 2016, 14:03
@keithcollantine your tyre gif’s are missing, 404’s
bezza695 (@bezza695)
5th April 2016, 14:06
I don’t understand why on earth Williams and Haas went that aggressive with SS tyres, Soft tyres get destroyed here so god knows what will happen to the SS tyres.
hobo (@hobo)
5th April 2016, 14:38
@bezza695 – My guess is that they plan to run them during qualifying, saving at least one soft and medium for the race. Massa’s one set of mediums will mean he has no practice on a set, but they could split the practice work with Massa testing softs and Bottas testing a set of mediums.
Park
5th April 2016, 14:51
I would not be surprised, if Williams (and Haas) gets it wrong…
Markku Hänninen (@hmmh)
5th April 2016, 15:15
Haas has so far been spot on with it’s strategy, let’s see what happens now that they have same idea as Williams..
hahostolze (@hahostolze)
5th April 2016, 14:55
Given the car’s decent tyre usage and grip, look out for long, stable stints from Verstappen with his extra set of mediums…
Bleu (@bleu)
5th April 2016, 16:10
Drawing conclusions from the Bahrain, those teams who have different tyre allocations tend to equalize tyres for qualifying and race. Three teams were having different allocations for Bahrain but all had similar selections for Q+R. However Manor had different strategy for race with 1+2+4 for Wehrlein and 1+3+3 for Haryanto.
So from that I draw that conclusion for Mercedes tyre strategy for the weekend.
Both Mercedes drivers use one medium and one soft in FP1. Then in FP2 Hamilton uses one medium and one soft, Rosberg uses two softs, so they will have two mediums, two softs and five supersofts from Saturday onwards. The tyre which was deemed worse from the FP2 long runs will be then used in FP3 along with one set of supersofts.
Markp
5th April 2016, 17:37
I think the same. When it comes to new tyres left for the race Ferrari and Mercedes will have the same. This is more to do with how they run the free practice sessions rather than the race. Last year was 2 stop race but will start on ss this year so interesting if anyone can do 2 stints more on the soft or if will need a 3rd stop.
PorscheF1 (@xtwl)
5th April 2016, 19:56
What I especially like is that teams that do not expect to reach Q3 can choose an extra set of the more durable tyre at basically no cost.
Thomson (@fish123)
6th April 2016, 4:58
i think ferrari may use the extra super soft in qualifying.
They may go for another hot lap while mercedes would have no more tyres remaining.
So maybe a ferrari pole??
MattDS (@mattds)
6th April 2016, 7:44
@fish123 1 SS for Q1, 2 for Q2, 2 for Q3. No race stint on fresh SS.
That’s how I see it for Mercedes.
I don’t see Ferrari going for 3 hot laps in Q3, so it’ll be pretty much the same.
anon
6th April 2016, 18:43
@mattds, I imagine that Ferrari will follow a similar pattern as well, not least because I don’t think that it would even be possible to complete three timed runs within Q3.
If we assume that times are going to be in the order of around 95 seconds (using the 2015 times as a very rough benchmark), then completing an outlap, one timed lap and then returning to the pits will take approximately 5 minutes. Given that the cars can only be refuelled within the garage, turning the car around within the garage and getting it out with enough time to spare on the clock seems very unlikely, if not impossible.
The only way that I could see them completing three back to back timed runs would be if they did not have to refuel inbetween runs – but, in that instance, the fuel weight penalty would surely mean that their first timed run would be very uncompetitive and therefore not really give them any advantage anyway.
In reality, therefore, I think that the only reason why Ferrari opted for an additional set of supersoft tyres was so they could complete a qualifying simulation in the final practise session, which they might hope gives them a chance of closing up on Mercedes.
AndrewW
6th April 2016, 14:26
Merc seem to be gearing up to split tyre choices for the vital FP2 session, maximising data harvesting (on race trim setups) for the harder compounds. I would be positively surprised if the drivers did not end up having identical numbers of each available compound on race day.