Sebastian Vettel says that Red Bull has to take steps to preserve its tyres after everyone suffered with their hards and mediums in Sepang today.
Vettel finished FP2 in second place, behind Kimi Raikkonen.
“We’ll see,” he said of the team’s prospects for the rest of the weekend. “I hope we have enough tyres to survive the race, tyre wear was obviously quite big today for everyone. Tomorrow is a different day. There could be some rain, and you saw how quickly things can change. It’s Malaysia.
“It’s a different place, different tyres. Today tyre wear was pretty severe for everyone. It’s not a lot of fun, but that’s how it is. We need to try a couple of things to make it better. We tried today. Hopefully we learned the right lessons and can make a step forward.
“This afternoon we couldn’t do that much because of the weather, which was a little bit disappointing.”
Meanwhile regarding the crossover between wet and dry tyres – always a big issue at Sepang – he said: “I think it was very exceptional today, one part was quite soaked, the other one pretty dry, so fairly quickly it dried up again. It was quite hot so it didn’t take a long time, considering the amount of rain. I think we had the number in our heads, but obviously it depends whether the whole circuit is wet, or just some corners.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Ayone who like tyres dominating F1 and forcing drivers to drive slower and below the potential of the car, is not a real F1 fan.
No, it was not always like this. Watch rces of old day, you rarely hear anyone talk about tyres. Nowadays? Watching lastw eek’s race I counted how many times the commentators said “tyres”. After 10 minutes it was 62 times and then I stopped.
It is all tyres, tyres, tyres, tyres now. The preview of a race, the sessions, qualifying, race, reviw of the race. Tyres tyres tyres tyres from commentators, fans, drivers, teams.
It’s like we are watching a Tyre Sport, not F1. Come on, this got ridicilous,
If Red Bull didn’t focus on ensuring they were able to adapt their car set-up to deal with this years tyre characteristics then they have no one else to blame, as many other teams obviously have.