Mario Isola: The conditions on the track were not safe

Pirelli did not respond to criticism from Lewis Hamilton, who interrupted a live interview with Formula 1 chief Stefano Domenicali on Saturday and said they had qualified calmly with real rain tires.

Mario IsolaPirelli: “It’s a shame that we couldn’t qualify due to the rain, I especially sympathize with the spectators who gathered in the stands at Interlagos. The track conditions were not safe enough, then it started to get dark, so postponing the session to tomorrow was a logical and reasonable decision.

The sprint turned out to be interesting. There wasn’t much overtaking, but we saw a lot of interesting battles, especially in the top four. As expected, all riders completed the sprint on Medium tires. Teams now have a starting point to determine their race strategy, although there are other factors to consider.

The first and most obvious is the weather: the forecast is that there is a greater chance of rain this afternoon than today. The second is the possible impact of today’s rain on the new track surface at Interlagos. There is a possibility that in the event of a dry race and/or qualifying, the grip on the track will return to the level of Friday.

We can only talk about strategy in terms of a dry race. Judging from what we saw today, we will see two pit stops in this case, both in terms of speed and for optimal control of the tires.

Theoretically you could limit yourself to one pit stop with the Medium and Hard tires, but we don’t think this is practical given the level of wear on the Medium tires we saw in the sprint.

“It is clear that teams have been able to make adjustments to limit wear and tear, but the data we currently have suggests that anyone going down this path will be taking an unnecessary step into the unknown.”