Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery says last year’s rain-hit United States Grand Prix weekend leaves Formula One teams with little data on slick tyre compounds ahead of their return to Austin this weekend.
Bad weather heavily disrupted proceedings at COTA 12 months ago, even leading the Saturday afternoon qualifying session to be delayed to Sunday morning.
The only dry running actually came during the race itself, with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton eventually claiming his third title after switching from intermediates to soft in a wet-to-dry contest.
Pirelli has nominated its medium, soft, and supersoft compound for this weekend, with teams making very different choices ahead of round 18 in this year’s world championship.
“The 2015 grand prix was particularly challenging because of the weather, meaning that the teams are lacking recent data on the slick compounds at Austin,” Hembery said.
“We’re also bringing the supersoft to the track for the very first time. As a result, the free practice sessions in particular will be extremely important this year, with the optimal strategy yet to be defined.”
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