F1 2020 SPAIN SETUP DRIVERS

That will hand some encouragement to Red Bull that Max Verstappen, ever the thorn in Merccedes’ side, might be able to take the fight to them once again. Though he’s very pleased to be back, Sergio Perez downplayed his chances of repeating Nico Hulkenberg’s third place on the grid last week. …but Verstappen looked good on a hotter trackBehind them the contest should be close. Whether that will remain the case from the next race, once ‘quali modes’ are banned, remains to be seen. Regardless, another Mercedes front-row lock-out tomorrow looks like a nailed-on certainty. This has happened before: Someone near the back with nothing to lose takes a chance on an unfancied tyre, finds unexpected pace from it and the leaders follow suit. The possibility remains that the tyre could turn out to be better than expected on race day. The grip, the feeling is really different to what we’re used to here.”

It’s just like all very gooey and wobbly. “Everything feels like – I’m going to make another headline here – gooey. Daniel Ricciardo, fourth-quickest for Renault after what he called a “delicious” second practice session, said the tyres were “behaving completely differently” in the hotter temperatures.

F1 2020 SPAIN SETUP DRIVERS

Other drivers were less trenchant in their criticism of the rubber but seemingly little happier with the hard tyres. So if teams are targeting a two-stop strategy, it can be also using the soft and the medium: Two soft and one medium or two medium and one soft.” We saw that also last year but we can confirm that this year. The one-stop strategy is marginal, it’s at the limit. “But then somebody could try to use the soft for one stint of the race. “I cannot exclude that somebody will try to qualify with a medium, it makes sense that when the car is heavy to have a consistent tyre and today the medium was, I would say the best one as a compromise between grip and consistency. Mercedes ran well in the cooler morning temperatures…“One second in Barcelona, considering that there is 66 laps, is quite a big delta,” said Pirelli’s head of motorsport and F1 Mario Isola. If those figures are seen on Sunday – and they may change as more rubber is laid on the track – it could encourage teams to opt for two-stop strategies. According to the sport’s official tyre supplier, the hard tyre is over a second per lap slower than the medium, while the soft offers a 0.7 second lap time gain over the middle compound.Īdvert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

Pirelli’s numbers back up Russell’s reasoning. So probably a two-stop: soft-medium-medium, or soft-medium-soft is going to be better than putting that hard on because it deserves no place on a Formula 1 car.” But the hard was so rubbish I think it’s a better tyre to go onto the soft tyre. “It’s going to be weird because ordinarily, if you want to make a one-stop work you’d say, medium-hard. “Gooey”: Ricciardo’s verdict on Pirelli’s hard tyresHe believes the hard tyre compound is so poor drivers may have to avoid the typical strategy of starting on the medium compound and making a single pit stop for hard tyres. “It’s absolutely garbage,” said the Williams driver. George Russell concurred with Norris’s assessment of how the hard compound was performing in the heat and, if anything, went even further than his rival.

In the summer heat, track temperatures nudged 50C on Friday and similar conditions are expected over the coming days. The Spanish Grand Prix is being held three months later than usual.

“I think it’s similar for everyone,” he continued, “any time anyone was on the hard tyre they looked awful, and they went on the medium or the soft and improved massively. Lando Norris described them as “garbage”, adding “I feel like I would have more grip on the wets right now.”

F1 2020 spain setup