Pirelli: Medium tires will play a more important role

      On Friday, most teams were working only with Medium and Soft tires. There don't seem to be any questions with Hard, but there is no information about their work either.…

      Simone Berra, Chief Engineer: "An interesting first day. As expected, the results are very tight – 14 drivers were separated by a second, and riders from seven different teams made it to the top ten. As for the performance of the tires, the initial analysis showed a relatively low level of granulation, lower than last year on this track.

      The track condition improved rapidly in the first session, and the situation stabilized in the second. The difference between the compositions of C4 and C5 was about half a second, which corresponds to our calculations, and we do not have enough data to estimate the difference between C3 and C4.

      In the second session, all the teams completed several long series of laps with lots of fuel, with all three teams involved, although the vast majority of the drivers - 17 out of 20 - focused on the C4. Both Mercedes drivers and Pierre Gasly used the hard drive.

      The tires of the C3 and C4 trains showed relatively low wear, while the C5 tires wore out faster, which is quite predictable. If the race is held in dry conditions, which now seems unlikely, then with this level of degradation, a single pit stop strategy will be optimal, with Medium playing a more important role than last year. In mixed wet and dry conditions, when temperatures are forecast to be much lower than today, even Soft can come into play."