During Friday’s only practice session in Austin, the drivers used all three tire compounds: C2, C3 and C4. Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra assessed the tires’ performance on the US circuit.
Simone Berra: “The sprint race weekends increase the challenge for everyone as teams have less time to evaluate car and tire performance before qualifying. This also applies to us, as we have less information at our disposal to help predict the behavior of the tires over the remaining days of the weekend.
However, on Friday we were still able to collect information about the performance of all three compounds, especially the Medium and Hard, on which the teams completed long series of laps with full tanks in preparation for the race. In terms of efficiency and stability, both formulations performed well.
As could be predicted in advance, soft tires are only effective for a short period of time, so the use of this mixture in racing is only possible in certain situations. For example, in the final laps after the safety car left the track.
Importantly, none of the three compounds showed a tendency to bubble, despite the high temperature of the asphalt, which confidently exceeded +40C.
We expect a busy day on Saturday: everything starts with qualifying for the sprint, and then follows the 19-lap sprint itself. Two weeks ago in Qatar, the choice of compound for the sprint appeared to be balanced: twelve riders started on Medium tires, eight on Soft. We could see the same scenario in Austin on Saturday.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
