Teams opt for more ultrasoft tyres for Canada

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Drivers and teams have overwhelmingly opted to request more sets of ultrasoft tyres from Pirelli for use in the next Grand Prix event in Canada.

Pirelli is offering up a choice of soft, supersoft and ultrasoft compounds to teams for the race at the Circuit Gille-Villeneuve. It's the same line-up that was available for last weekend's Monaco Grand Prix. Each driver gets 13 sets of tyres in total.

For the first five races of the season, it was down to Pirelli to set the proportions of the different tyres supplied to each driver. But From Monaco onwards, the teams get to stipulate the split between the different compounds.

The decisions made for the Canadian Grand Prix were announced bny Pirelli on Tuesday.

Teams had complained that the soft tyre was simply too hard to be useful in Monaco. Even the ultrasofts were close to being able to complete a full race distance on the street circuit. As a result,it's not surprising to see the 'prime' compound shunned by most drivers for the similar Montreal track.

Pirelli puts its hard tyre in storage until Suzuka

Lewis Hamilton, Daniel Ricciardo, Max Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen, Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso and Romain Grosjean just take a single set of the soft tyres, the minimum allowable. Sauber's Pascal Wehrlein is alone in wanting three sets of the compound to be made available.

Alonso and Vandoorne have gone for the most aggressive tyre strategy, with McLaren requesting 10 sets of ultrasoft tyres for both their drivers.

Ferrai have requested nine sets of ultrasofts for both Vettel and Raikkonen, leaving them with just three sets of supersofts each to fall back on.

Mercedes have ordered eight sets of ultrasofts for both Hamilton and Bottas. Likewise, Force India and Toro Rosso have requested the same amount for all of their drivers.

That leaves everyone else - Red Bull, Williams, Haas, Renault and Sauber - all opting to take seven sets of ultrasofts for Canada, with the balance made up with supersofts.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.