Mario Isola on tire selection for Austin and Mexico

      At the Spa stage, Pirelli tested the "every other" compound selection scheme; now the experiment is planned to be repeated in Austin and Mexico City. Pirelli's motorsport division head Mario Isola explained the reasons...

      Mario Isola: "Due to the weather in Spa, it was difficult to draw conclusions, but I like this idea, and we decided to use the same approach in Texas and Mexico, where we will skip the intermediate compound between Hard and Medium. The goal remains the same – to ensure strategic variability. We conducted simulations and found that increasing the difference between Hard and Medium means that if a team decides to use Hard and do the race with one pit stop, it will be penalized by slower tires. At the same time, if a team opts for a more aggressive approach with two pit stops, it will use Medium and Soft compounds, which are faster. We want to try this scheme again in Mexico and Austin.

      In modeling, the two-stop strategy is slightly faster than the one-stop strategy. Usually, if the total race time with one or two pit stops is nearly the same, teams choose the single-stop strategy to avoid the risk of an additional pit stop, fearing traffic or mistakes during car servicing. Therefore, they naturally tend to choose a one-stop race. We want to change this choice by skipping one compound."