Pirelli noticed that during the first training session in Las Vegas, only Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez drove exclusively on the softest tires, while the drivers of the other teams managed to work on both Soft and Medium tires.
There was also no demand for the Hardest tires in the second session, indicating that the teams decided to keep both Hard sets for the race. Most drivers used Medium tires for long sets of laps, with only Lewis Hamilton and Kevin Magnussen running such runs on Soft sets.
Simone Berra, Chief Engineer of Pirelli Motorsport: “A very productive day as the drivers were able to work systematically on the track during the two hours of training and collected a large amount of information on the behavior of the cars and tires in this atypical city circuit. Moreover, the work took place on the highway under conditions that were very different from normal.
Of course, the asphalt surface was very dirty, but the more laps the cars drove, the higher the speeds became. But this happens all the time on city circuits, because once the race weekend is over, the roads open to regular traffic.
The road surface conditions will continue to improve over the next few days of the weekend, and it is difficult to imagine that grip levels will stabilize: most likely it will continue to increase even as the race progresses.
We see a significant improvement in lap times compared to last year: Lewis Hamilton’s time (1’33.825) is almost one and a half seconds better than Charles Leclerc’s practice time last year, and is only just over a second behind his pole position time (1’32.726).
If we talk about the behavior of rubber, it is worth emphasizing that the hard compound is the most suitable for racing. Paradoxically, no one used it today.
Regarding granulation, the Medium and Soft tires were prone to this phenomenon, especially the front ones, but today we saw that this only affects the surface of the rubber. So we are not talking about intensive wear and tear.
Under these conditions the cars mainly suffer from understeer and one of the key points this weekend is to get the settings as balanced as possible. You must also take into account that the front tires cool down on a long straight stretch. Today we saw that by the time we braked into Turn 14, the tire temperature had dropped by an average of 35 degrees.”
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.
