Yesterday at 12:10
The Belgian Grand Prix will host an event not witnessed for the
past three and a half years in F1 courtesy of tyre supplier
Pirelli. The Italian manufacturer has opted to skip a compound for
the sprint weekend at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. It is the
first time it has happened since the 2022 Australian Grand Prix.
The three compounds available will be the C1, the hardest tyre in
Pirelli's range, but then there is a jump to the medium [C3], with
the soft being C4. At Melbourne's Albert Park in 2022, the hard and
medium were the C2 and C3, skipping on to the C5 for the soft.
According to Pirelli's simulations, the trio of tyres for this
weekend "should make a two-stop strategy even more competitive" for
the grand prix, "while adding a greater degree of uncertainty to
tyre management" in general throughout the weekend. That is
primarily because there is only one practice session and a
different dry tyre allocation. With the sprint format, the
regulations stipulate one fewer set of tyres than on a normal
weekend are used, with each driver allocated 12 sets - six soft,
four medium and two hard. Additionally, the medium is the only tyre
permitted for the first two parts of sprint qualifying, which takes
place on Friday evening, and the soft must be used in the top-10
shootout. With the track nestling in the forest of the Ardennes
hills, there is the added variable of the capricious nature of the
weather, even from one part of the track to another, and in the
height of summer. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that
both types of wet weather tyre, the intermediate and extreme, are
used at some stage. Contentious end to 2024 GP Last year, the race
proved to be highly contentious. The vast majority of drivers lined
up on the grid on the medium. The exceptions were Ferrari's Carlos
Sainz and Zhou Guanyu, then with Sauber, who opted for the hard,
whilst RB's Daniel Ricciardo started on the softs. The two-stop
proved to be the preferred choice, with the hard compound working
best in terms of degradation and performance. Of the 19 drivers who
finished the race, with Zhou the only retirement, just five -
Mercedes' George Russell, Aston Martin duo Fernando Alonso and
Lance Stroll, Kevin Magnussen for Haas, and RB's Yuki Tsunoda -
pitted only once, switching from medium to hard. The strategy
appeared to pay dividends for Russell, in particular, who won the
race, only to later be disqualified for his car being under the
minimum regulation weight following post-race FIA scrutineering.
That allowed team-mate Lewis Hamilton to claim his record-extending
105th grand prix victory after adopting a medium-hard-hard
strategy.
