In Monaco this past weekend, Mark Webber became the Formula One season’s sixth different winner in six races – a new record – underlining just how closely matched the cars are this year.
Like this article? Sign up for our enews blasts here.
At the start all the drivers – apart from Sebastian Vettel, Jenson Button, Paul di Resta, Vitaly Petrov and Pedro de la Rosa – started on Pirelli’s P Zero Red supersoft tire.
With the possibility of rain predicted halfway through the race, the drivers concentrated on making their first set of tires last for as long as possible in order to minimize the potential number of pit stops. The timing of the pit stops is always crucial in Monaco make certain that the cars do not feed out into traffic that is too difficult to overtake. A flawless one-stop strategy ensured that Webber was able to convert his pole position into a second win at Monaco.
Nico Rosberg was the first of the leaders to change from supersoft to P Zero Yellow soft on lap 27, banking on no rain coming. Two laps later, Webber also pitted, but crucially he was able to emerge ahead of Rosberg. The longest stint on the supersoft was carried out by Daniel Ricciardo, who made his original set of P Zero Reds last for 40 laps.
Vettel’s strategy meant that he was able to take the lead by the halfway point of the race, building up a significant advantage by the time he finally pitted for supersoft tires on lap 46, having put in a series of rapid laps. But it was not quite enough for him to keep the lead after his stop: Vettel re-joined in fourth position behind Fernando Alonso, who now heads the championship standings.
Jean-Eric Vergne took an early pit stop on lap 17 and moved from 17th on the grid to a points-scoring seventh. He then gambled on switching to intermediates with six laps to go after running on the soft tire for 53 laps. Sergio Perez set the fastest lap of the race on the soft tire, having started at the back end of the pack.
“Once again we saw that the cars were all extremely closely matched, equaling each other on pace throughout the race,” says Paul Hembery, Pirelli’s motorsport director. “This was despite the fact that nobody had any proper running on the supersoft with full tanks due to the mixed weather conditions during free practice on Thursday. As a result, calculating the strategy was extremely complicated. But with the nature of the circuit, plus a tire choice that was certainly more conservative and hardly any tire degradation, it was clear that a one-stop strategy was the way forward as soon as the teams learned more about the performance of the supersoft after the race got underway,” he explains.
“Obviously that led to longer stints and limited opportunities for overtaking,” Hembery continues. “Although there was some rain at the end, our slick tires still offered enough grip to carry the leaders through to a very close finish with the top six finishing within six seconds of each other.”
For more information, visit www.pirelli.com.
Have articles like this sent to you weekly by signing up for our enews blasts here.
