“We were not aware of this superficial treatment”– Pirelli fears selection of soft tyres in Turkey is a “too aggresive” strategy

Tanish Chachra | 08/10/2021
"We were not aware of this superficial treatment"– Pirelli fears selection of soft tyres in Turkey is a "too aggresive" strategy

“We were not aware of this superficial treatment”– Pirelli fears the tyres chosen in Turkey are “too aggressive” after following last year’s data.

After drivers failed to find sufficient grip in Turkey last year, Pirelli went one step ahead in their tyre selection this year by choosing softer compounds- from the C1, C2, C3 combination in 2020 to the C2, C3 and C4 in 2021.

However, Pirelli, seeing the two practice sessions on Friday, fears that they may have gone too aggressive on their compound choices as the track characteristics seem different from last year.

“I believe that the soft is quite an aggressive choice,” said Pirelli Formula 1 boss Mario Isola. “Consider that when we selected the tyres, the three compounds for this race, we were not aware of this superficial treatment that they were planning.

“So looking at the data from last year, we decided to go one step softer. The soft is quite an aggressive choice. And I believe that some teams were using the soft today just to get rid of them, and focus on the medium and hard for the race, if they want to plan a one-stop strategy.”

There will be more cars on soft

Isola then predicted it is more likely that more cars would be on softs during the Q2 on Saturday, considering the delta lap time between soft and mediums is marginal. The latter is the more usual choice in other Grand Prix qualifyings.

“I believe that we will see more than two or three cars trying to qualify on the soft because the delta lap time between the soft and the medium is minimal.”

“So it’s not like one second, where you take a big risk to go through Q2 with a medium instead of the soft, with this small difference, probably more cars are trying to qualify on the medium compound.”

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Pirelli

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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