Sauber’s James Key says soft tyres for Silverstone right option, hard tyres to be tricky – Formula 1
Sauber’s technical director James Key has stated that the Pirelli soft tyres to be used for the 2011 Silverstone Grand Prix are the right choice keeping in mind the degradation rate.
However, Key stated that the Pirelli hard tyres to be used as the prime tyres are expected to give some trouble because they require more time to warm up. He added that Silverstone is a pretty rough track and is very harsh on the tyres.
Key further added that the Sauber team is further looking into the qualifying performance and will be bringing some updates to the diffuser and rear wing for Silverstone.
Sauber have performed well in the last couple of races where the soft and the super soft compounds were used. But now as Pirelli has decided to go to the conventional setup of hard and soft compound, Key thinks that it will be a bit of a problem for the
teams.
“We expect that the tyres will be key again this weekend. We have the soft and the hard tyre compound. We have to be careful with the hard tyre. With the soft tyre we are happy. Silverstone is typically quite heavy on tyres with the amount of loadings they
get, and the surface of the track is quite rough,” stated Key.
He further added that the team will up their performance in the qualifiers as well to match their race performance.
He said, “For the car we've looked a lot in detail at where we seemed to suffer some performance issues particularly during the last two events in qualifying. We will have some developments around the diffuser and a new rear wing to test.”
Sauber are currently sixth on the constructors’ table with 27 points. They are currently the leading mid-runner team of the 2011 season. Their Japanese driver, Kamui Kobayashi, has landed among points in six out of eight occasions in the 2011 season.
The Silverstone weekend will start from Friday Free Practice sessions on July 8, 2011.
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