Izola: Optimal tactic: start on Soft and one pit stop

Pirelli’s tire workers commented on Saturday’s results, noting that the teams had time to work on the track and rain tires at the start of practice three, but during practice three the weather conditions at Zandvoort returned to normal and qualifying took place on a dry track.

Contrary to the hopes of the Dutch fans, pole position did not go to their idol Max Verstappen, but to McLaren driver Lando Norris, who won qualifying with a very convincing lead.

Mario IsolaHead of Pirelli’s Racing Department: “During practice and the first two parts of qualifying the results seemed very close, but in the final session Norris improved and became unreachable for his rivals. The McLaren driver drove a fantastic lap, winning pole position by an impressive 0.356 seconds, and that on a circuit where the lap length is just over four kilometres!

Of course, bad weather and several incidents, which interrupted track work, prevented teams and drivers from properly preparing for qualifying.

During these 60 minutes it became clear that soft tyres only perform optimally in the first fast lap, and the change to new sets of tyres made a noticeable improvement in time. This factor probably influenced the results even more than the improvement in the condition of the asphalt surface.

When it comes to possible scenarios for tomorrow’s race, the results of the training – although the amount of information received in these three hours is relatively small – confirmed the results obtained on the simulator before the Dutch stage.

Calculations show that the quickest way to cover the distance is with a single pit stop, while the Soft/Hard combination seems to be the most preferred. In this case, the pit stop will have to take place between laps 24 and 30. If you start on Medium, you can switch to hard tyres of the C1 compound four laps later. closer to lap 34.”