Saturday 18 April 2015

Pirelli Bahrain Qualifying report

(Pirelli Motorsport Media)

Lewis Hamilton claimed pole position for tomorrow’s Bahrain night race at the Sakhir circuit where the reigning world champion used a brand new set of the P-Zero Soft compound tyre. 

The double world champion’s fastest time was a 1m 34.599s as the Mercedes driver finished the session just ahead of Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel who also set his fastest time of 1m 34.668s using a brand new set of the yellow walled Soft tyre.

All of the drivers in the top ten used the new sets of the P-Zero yellow walled Soft compound tyre. Pirelli predict that the difference between the recommended two stop and a possible three stop strategy is 0.6s.

A two stop strategy for the 57 lap race is to start on the Soft, change to the Soft again on lap 19 before switching to the Medium compound tyre on lap 38. The best three stop strategy is to start the race on the Soft compound tyre and stop on lap 15 for another set of the Soft tyres before stopping again on lap 35 before finishing the race on the Medium compound tyre from lap 46.

Speaking about today’s track action, Pirelli Motorsport Director Paul Hembery stated:

The performance gap between the medium and the soft tyre that we saw in qualifying confirms the fact that the soft will be the best race tyre tomorrow. It’s going to be interesting now to see how Mercedes and Ferrari use those tyres over longer stints in the race, which opens up many interesting possibilities.’

© Ben Johnston 2015

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