Pirelli F1 boss Paul Hembery remains confident that China will be a two or three stop race, despite teams experiencing worse degradation than expected with the soft tyre today.
Most teams found that the tyre lasted only a handful of laps before its performance dropped off badly, but Hembery believes that the track will improve.
“Degradation has not been excessive on the medium compound, which at 0.2 seconds per lap is in line with our expectations,” said Hembery. “Rosberg’s fastest time in FP1, for example, was set on an old set of medium tyres that had already covered 10 laps and Massa also completed quite a long run on the soft tyres in FP2.
“In total, we’d expect the soft tyre to last between 11 to 12 laps in the race and the medium tyre for about 18 laps. This would suggest a maximum of three pit stops but it’s also possible that we’ll see two stops if the track keeps on evolving at this rate.
“We experienced some graining on the front left, particularly with the soft tyre, which has resulted in higher levels of degradation than we would like, although we are confident that this will come down as the weekend goes on. The performance gap between the two compounds is around 1.5s, which is a little higher than we initially expected but it’s still early days here.”
Adam Cooper F1 