The tortuous Zandvoort track suggests a one-stop race, where the difficulties of overtaking will make defending the position advantage more important than pace. The strategies, however, do not seem straightforward, among those who have preserved a set of new soft tires and a hard compound still to be fully discovered. To illustrate the strategic picture for the race is Simone Berra, Chief Engineer of Pirelli.
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Hard unknown
“I would say that the single stop is somewhat the goal of all teams,” explains engineer Berra. “Perhaps there is a bit more uncertainty about the compounds to use, because anyway Leclerc in the Sprint with the soft gave rather important indications. The soft tire is usable and as consistent as the medium. It can be a good race tire on a sufficiently long stint, just like the medium.”
The unknown instead concerns the third compound, which among the top teams only Red Bull tried on Friday: “The question mark shifts a bit more to the hard tire and how well it will work in dirty track conditions, since it has reset many times during the weekend. During the free practice sessions we had different comments. According to some, the hard is a good compound, while others suffered more. All three compounds are in play and it will be interesting to see which ones the teams choose.”
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The hard tire will be a reserve to be decided in the second part of the race, as Berra expects a preference for softer compounds at the start: “At the start I see the soft and medium as candidates for the first stint. Compared to the Sprint, there could be more teams aiming for the soft at the start. Surely I expect those who have a set of new soft tires to use them, for example Ferrari or Verstappen. Yesterday, however, Leclerc started on a used soft tire and overall it was a very consistent stint, so the deficit is not that big.”
From there on, a cautious phase of the race will open, with the first pit stops expected after several laps regardless of the compound fitted at the start. “Several strategies open up”, comments Berra. “The one we see on paper as the fastest is to start on the medium and then go to the hard, while the soft-hard combination is very close. The window for the pit stop is more or less the same between the two solutions, centered around lap 30.”
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Other options
Alternatives to the base plan, however, are not lacking: “Using the medium at the start and extending the first stint a lot, then you could even fit the soft. We know that someone is considering this. For us, it is a very risky strategy, because in the Sprint we saw particularly high wear, especially on the outer area of the front left. Surely you cannot extend the stint beyond a certain number of laps, because you would reach 100% wear and there is always the risk of losing performance. Doing soft-medium is a bit on the edge also in terms of management, while on the hard we expect that it can be managed less in the second part of the race, also thanks to the more rubbered-in track.”
Simulations say that the medium-soft combination should be 6-7 seconds slower than the fastest strategy, while the two-stop is faster, but with other handicaps: “The double stop is competitive from the mathematical calculations point of view on the total race time, but I don’t think teams want to take the risk of ending up in traffic. Yesterday we saw that even with these cars overtaking is very complicated. Among the top ten there was only Leclerc’s overtake. [The two stops] could be an idea for those who want to try to push a bit more and be more aggressive, otherwise I don’t see big advantages.”
Three teams in the fight
Leading the pack will be McLaren’s Lando Norris, protagonist of a Sprint suffering from degradation, but with good chances to do better today. “I think he can fight for the win”, comments Pirelli’s Chief Engineer. “We don’t know what changes they made to the setup. What we saw is that McLaren exploited the tire much more than others and probably had higher degradation than rivals due to a non-optimal setup. Basically, however, I see McLaren very competitive, especially in fast corners.”
“Anyway, they are all close to each other, Mercedes and Ferrari. Ferrari, perhaps, did not manage to exploit qualifying to be up front, but in my opinion in the race they can be close to the leaders and try to do something different, like an undercut. Here it’s not very powerful, especially if you end up in traffic and if you don’t have enough margin to push more on the out lap, but it can be a solution if you are close enough to the car ahead”, concludes Berra.
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