Canada promises to be an exciting and unpredictable race, not least because of the different tyre strategies being employed.
Christian Horner says he’s surprised that only Robert Kubica among the top 10 runners joined RBR in running the harder prime tyre, but McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh says he’s happy with the choice of options.
“Frankly Lewis was quick on both types of tyres,” said Whitmarsh. “We had quite a lot of debate in the team as to which way we should go, I guess we’ll know in 24 hours whether we got it right. Inevitably everyone has to use the option tyre at some point, and I think it will be difficult for someone who starts on the prime to say run 20-30 laps and then switch to the option and then go to the end. So I think then definitely you have to two-stop if you start on the prime.
“Obviously we’ve got two guys who have got to look after the tiers at the start of the race, and we’ll see how it works out. If there are some safety cars that will either make it look a better decision or worse decision, but in terms of getting to the end you have to run at some point with the option tyre, it’s clearly going to be a short stint, or relatively short stint, and as everyone had to do that, we’re choosing to do it at the beginning of the race.”
Clearly it was a close decision, even within McLaren: “There are people in the team who felt we should have qualified on prime, and others who felt that we should have qualified on option. I don’t think we’re going to share all of our strategic thinking. I think we’re in reasonable shape. We’ll see tomorrow. It’ll either work or it won’t…”
Adam Cooper F1 