Soft by name, stubborn by nature
Baku has thrown teams a curveball with Pirelli’s C4, C5, and C6 selection, and the super-soft C6 is proving especially tricky. Throughout the season it has often needed multiple laps to switch on — and at times has been slower than the C5. Practice in Azerbaijan reinforced that narrative, turning qualifying and race planning into a tense trade-off.
Practice trends — and caution
Drivers logged mileage on the C6 to save sets and gather data, but many teams leaned on the medium (C5) as a competitive baseline. Ferrari and Red Bull focused on understanding both softer compounds, while others — including McLaren after brushes with the wall — gathered less.
What engineers are solving
- How to structure qualifying runs if the medium enters the mix.
- Protecting the best tyre sets for a likely one-stop from medium to hard.
- Adapting out-lap prep to coax life from the C6 when it counts.
As Red Bull’s Gianpiero Lambiase noted, getting the programme right for qualifying without compromising the grand prix is the needle teams must thread.
