Pirelli’s Paul Hembery believes tyre selection will make Indian GP exciting – Formula 1 news
Pirelli expects the drivers to utilise the soft compound tyres to the maximum during the Indian Grand Prix.
Pirelli Motorsport Director Paul Hembery suggested that he would not be surprised to see the drivers making late pit stops in order to minimise their time on the hard compounds, and tagged their decision of bringing the hard compound tyres to India a little
too conservative. Although he did mention that because they had no prior knowledge of the track, they could not risk the quality of the race going with soft and super soft tyres.
He did concede though that they could have done very well with the current medium tyres they had at the Indian Grand Prix. It was the possibility of high temperatures in India that resulted in their decision to bring in hard and soft tyres, but it has not
been that hot and so far, some good durability from the soft tyres has been observed. That is a good indication of an exciting race on Sunday.
Asked what the gap in lap time between the two tyres was, Hembery said, “Huge, two seconds. But even if you'd asked me before [Friday], I would have said they are going to limit their time on the hard tyre at the end of the race, much as we have seen at
a few races this year.”
He also mentions how the strategy to go with soft and super soft tyres really worked at the Singapore Grand Prix, but they had data to look into before deciding with that type of compound.
“It's one of those things because when we were planning for here we didn't have any information about the tarmac, in fairness the tarmac wasn't laid. So we had to make sure we had a special reserve in case we came here and it was 50C - hindsight is fantastic
in life,” he said.
The soft compound tyres have proved much quicker than the hard tyres, and drivers are definitely going to try and maximise their running on the soft tyres. That will make the last ten minutes of the race even more interesting.
The action will begin after the qualifiers on Saturday, marking the historic first ever Indian Grand Prix on Sunday, October 30, 2011.
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