Canada – Course: Summary of Strategies

Sebastian Vettel clinched the 29th victory of his career at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Canada, securing Red Bull Racing’s first win on this track. Vettel triumphed with a two-stop strategy, extending his lead in the world championship after starting on P Zero Red supersoft tires, before switching to mediums for his last two stints on the track.

The track was completely dry after the wet conditions during the previous day’s qualifying. Despite an open choice for tires at the start, the top 10 unanimously decided to start with the softest compound, which proved to be almost a second faster per lap on average compared to the medium. The supersofts also benefited from a quicker warm-up, which was one of the keys to Vettel’s sprint strategy.

Paul di Resta is the best-placed driver with a different strategy. The Scotsman from the Force India team started 17th on the grid with the medium compound. He then embarked on a 56-lap stint on the same set to finish 7th. Romain Grosjean’s Lotus and the two Marussias were the only other cars to start the race with the hardest compound.

After having driven very little on slicks before the race due to the wet conditions of the weekend, the teams had to show flexibility with the adopted strategy, without having representative information on degradation and wear levels. As expected, these two parameters remained under control.

Paul Hembery, Director of Pirelli Motorsport: The Canadian Grand Prix was a small step into the unknown for everyone, with significantly higher track temperatures than during yesterday’s qualifying. The Canada circuit is also one of the most demanding circuits for rear tires due to the high traction demands, especially after the weekend’s precipitation: the moisture effectively cleaned the previous rubber off the track, reducing grip levels. Despite this, wear and degradation were under control for all the drivers at the front and there was little graining observed, which is usually frequent in this race. However, Mercedes seemed to suffer from high levels of degradation with Nico Rosberg, who was the only driver in the top 10 to use a three-stop strategy. While two stops were clearly the standard approach, Paul di Resta had an excellent race showing it was possible to complete a race on one stop with a 56-lap stint on a first set of mediums.

The best times of day by compound:

– Super Tendres: Webber en 1:16.182 devant Alonso en 1:16.203 et Hamilton en 1:16.354

– Mediums: Vergne en 1:17.909 devant Di Resta en 1:17.957 et Grosjean en 1:18.349

Longest stint in the race:

– Super Tendres: 27 tours par Jenson Button (McLaren)

– Mediums: 56 tours par Paul Di Resta (Force India)

[From the official press release published by Pirelli]

In order to have a better understanding of this graph, you can use the FIA lap-by-lap by clicking here.