F1 has same tyre problem every year in Mexico – Sainz

Formula 1 drivers are suffering severe tyre graining again at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, according to Carlos Sainz Jnr.

The sport’s official tyre supplier Pirelli has brought a harder selection of tyres for this year’s race. Whereas 12 months ago it brought its softest tyre selection to Mexico, it has not selected its softest compound for this year’s race.

However Sainz said the grip levels at the track were “tricky like last year” and drivers had to slow down to prevent their tyres from graining.

“[There’s] a lot of graining for everyone,” said the McLaren driver. “It just depends if you want to back off three seconds on the first lap [and] have less graining, or you want to push. It’s not really depending on the tyre or how you treat it, it’s how much you push, really.”

The very low grip at the Mexico City circuits makes it hard for drivers to keep the tyres within the operating window of temperature, said Sainz.

“It just shows that it doesn’t matter how hard or soft, when you throw these Pirellis a bit out of the window they struggle. They struggle a lot.

“It’s a bit bad. We come here every year and every year we have the same problems. So something to work on with these Pirelli tyres because it cannot be that, it cannot be that it doesn’t matter the compound, you just struggle with graining.”

Although the track conditions are likely to improve over the next two days, Sainz believes that will only slightly lessen the problem.

“The track will grip up, it will get better. Temperatures will be probably a bit higher. But it shouldn’t be that much: three seconds, four seconds of graining is a lot.”

During last year’s race some teams adopted extreme tyre saving tactics during the race. Sauber driver Charles Leclerc was told over 50 times to save his tyres in order to make his strategy work.

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