Berra: Piastre's time is about a second better than the forecast.

      Pirelli's technical team summarized the results of the first day at the Spa track in Belgium, which concluded with McLaren driver Oscar Piastri taking pole position for tomorrow's sprint race. The Italian company highlighted that the time shown by the Australian (1'40''510) is a new track record in its current configuration.

      By the way, the pole award was presented to Oscar by Mario Isola, Pirelli Motorsport director.

      Simone Berra, Pirelli's chief engineer: "Considering the conditions during today’s track sessions, with asphalt temperatures ranging from 30 to 35 degrees Celsius, the C1 (Hard) compound performed better than expected. This primarily applies to cars capable of generating sufficient aerodynamic downforce, which allowed the hard tires to work quite effectively and almost without slipping.

      Of course, the speed difference with the Medium tires is very noticeable, especially since we decided not to use the compounds sequentially at Spa, so after C1, the next in line as Medium is C3.

      At the end of the sprint qualifying, we observed that the difference between C3 and C4 was about four tenths of a second, close to our preliminary simulations. But in reality, the pole time was much better than we predicted, despite our calculations being based on averaged data from the teams. The pole time is already about a second faster, and that’s only Friday!

      The fact that four drivers still have two sets of Hard available could mean they might use one of them in the sprint, considering that regulations require one set of hard tires to be saved for the Sunday race, along with one set of Medium.

      During the single hour-long practice session, all teams except Haas and Sauber worked with technical updates prepared for the Spa round. Consequently, they had very little time to evaluate the tire performance over long runs. This will be clearer tomorrow after the sprint, and it’s quite possible that the race on Saturday will see the use of all three tire compounds.

      It’s also possible that drivers with little to lose, starting from the back of the grid, might use the 15-lap sprint to test the behavior of other tire compounds besides Medium, which is considered the most obvious choice for a short race. They might do so with an eye on Sunday’s Grand Prix – unless the weather intervenes and disrupts everyone’s plans.