Pirelli: Hembery, “A three-stop strategy seems to be the best option”

Pirelli – Just like last year, the final qualifying session in Malaysia took place in wet conditions. Lewis Hamilton took pole position with the intermediate Cinturato Verde. Behind him, less than a tenth of a second, from Sebastian Vettel, with the same compound.

The Ferrari and Valtteri Bottas Williams drivers were the only ones to contest Q1 using only the hard tyres, thus saving an extra set of new medium tires for the race.

In Q2 the drivers hurried to set a time with the mediums as soon as possible, before the rain arrived, which started falling after a few minutes and then became more intense, so that no one dared to get out on the track for the rest of the session.

With a half-hour delay, Q3 began after the rain stopped: some drivers mounted the Cinturato blue wet, others the Cinturato Green intermediate. As the track progressively dried out, the top ten riders all switched to intermediates to try to get maximum grip on the wet asphalt. The first lap on intermediate tires was enough for Hamilton to secure the fortieth pole position of his career.

This morning, in the final free practice session, which took place in dry conditions, with track temperatures reaching 58 degrees centigrade, Nico Rosberg was faster than his teammate Hamilton. Both Mercedes drivers were on medium tyres.

For tomorrow's race, a three-stop strategy is the most likely scenario, but everything, obviously, will depend on the weather conditions, which are traditionally changeable in Malaysia.

As usual, the first 10 drivers on the grid will start the race on the tires they finished Q2 with: in this case the P Zero White medium. The other drivers will be able to choose which dry tires to start the race with (provided there is a dry race).

Paul Hembery, Pirelli Motorsport Director, said: “As has often happened in the past, we had an eventful qualifying in Malaysia, interrupted by rain. The entire weekend is a great challenge: on the one hand the high temperatures which put the medium compound especially to the test, and on the other the sudden rain. The intermediate Cinturato had been used for a handful of laps during pre-season testing, but this year we had not yet encountered such heavy rain and for the first time the full wet tires took to the track. The intermediate tires performed particularly well, providing an emotional ending. This year's race will be very different from last year's, because the start has been brought forward by an hour, a condition that could bring the asphalt temperatures to very high values, higher than those seen so far. This is why a three-stop strategy seems to be the best option."

The Pirelli strategy:

There are two three-stop strategies that could prove successful for the 56-lap Malaysian Grand Prix. The fastest three-stop strategy involves: starting on medium tyres, stopping on lap 11 to put on hard tyres, hard again on lap 26 and final stint on hard tyres from lap 41.
An alternative three-stop strategy could be this: start with mediums, again mediums from lap 11, new set of mediums on lap 24 and, finally, hard from lap 37.
If the degradation is sufficiently contained, the fastest two-stop strategy could be: starting on medium, hard from lap 15 and, finally, new set of hard from lap 36.
The rain that fell during qualifying cleared the track of rubber residue, which makes it even more difficult to calculate degradation levels. Theoretically there is a minimal time difference between a two-stop and a three-stop strategy; this could lead teams to have a flexible approach and choose to switch between them.

Fastest in FP3:

Rosberg 1m39.690s Medium new
Hamilton 1m39.874s Medium new
Raikkonen 1m40.245s Medium new
Tires used by the top 10:

Hamilton 1m49.834s Intermediate new
Vettel 1m49.908s Intermediate new
Rosberg 1m50.299s Intermediate new
Ricciardo 1m51.541s Intermediate new
Kvyat 1m51.951s Intermediate new
Verstappen 1m51.981s Intermediate new
Mass 1m52.473s Intermediate new
Grosjean 1m52.981s Intermediate new
Bottas 1m53.179s Intermediate new
Ericsson 1m53.261s Intermediate new