Pirelli expects three pit stops per driver for tomorrow
Many teams and drivers were concerned about the tire performance for Pirelli's first South Korean Grand Prix, but the Italian manufacturer, which selected the softest tires for this Grand Prix, expects to see degradation similar to recent races. There should be about three pit stops per driver tomorrow during the race according to Pirelli's estimates.
The choice to supply super-soft and soft tires for the South Korean Grand Prix was considered a gamble by most of the paddock, but ultimately this choice seems to be the best because even though the Yeongam circuit is new and therefore very abrasive, the tires don’t seem to degrade as quickly as expected – except for certain teams, notably HRT.
Paul Hembery, the head of competition at Pirelli, expects an interesting race because the teams have had little time to assess the two types of tires – since it rained all day yesterday.
« The teams had little time to assess the super soft tires before the qualifying session, but from what we’ve seen so far, we expect drivers to make three pit stops tomorrow. This is what we had anticipated as the average for the year overall, » stated Paul Hembery.
He also believes that the performance gap between the tires – estimated at about 1 second per lap – should allow for different strategies and overtaking between drivers.
The super soft tires seem to be able to function for 10 laps for tomorrow, while the soft tires should be able to last 20 laps. We expect a lap time difference between our two compounds here to be between 7 tenths and 1 second per lap given what we have seen today.
