Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Pirelli expects strategy variation to continue in China

Pirelli expects variations between race strategies to continue at this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix.

New tyre regulations for 2016 see Pirelli bring three compounds to each race, with teams given complete freedom to pick ten of the 13 sets for each weekend. The opening two races have seen some teams taking vastly differing approaches - highlighted by Williams two-stopping on mediums in Bahrain while Haas and Renault ran three stints on supersofts - and Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery expects the trend to continue in Shanghai.

"China is a very different type of circuit to the two that we’ve visited up to now this year, yet the tyre nomination is the same, which underlines the adaptability of our product under a wide range of circumstances," Hembery said.

"Shanghai is also likely to be quite a cool race, although the nature of the place means that anything is possible, so teams will have to keep an open mind on strategy and carefully correlate the data captured in practice to the eventual race conditions.

"The three compounds selected have led to a number of different tactical permutations up to now, and we expect an ample variety of strategies once more in China."

With F1 set to revert to the 2015 qualifying format this weekend, the tyre allocations are unchanged.

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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.