Pirelli: Hembery, “Congratulations to Lewis. Our tire innovations for 2015 will already debut this week"

Pirelli – Lewis Hamilton wins the F1 World Championship for the second time in his career, but it is the first time with Pirelli tires. The Englishman followed a two-stop strategy: he started on the P Zero Red supersoft tires from second place on the grid, then took the lead before completing two stints on the P Zero Yellow soft tyres.

With their sixteenth victory of this season, Mercedes broke the all-time record of 15 victories held by Ferrari and McLaren. Hamilton also became the first world champion Mercedes driver since Juan Manuel Fangio. The Englishman has reached the top step of the podium 11 times this year.

In the final part of the race, Hamilton's first place was "threatened" by Felipe Massa, who used a different two-stop strategy.
The Williams driver started on the supersofts from fourth place on the grid, then switched to the softs and finally ran the last 13 laps again on the supersofts, about a second faster than the softs. This allowed the Brazilian to close the race less than three seconds behind Hamilton. His teammate, Valtteri Bottas, completed the podium, using a supersoft-soft-soft strategy.

After being excluded from qualifying, both Red Bull drivers started the race from the pitlane, adopting a soft-soft-supersoft strategy. This allowed Daniel Ricciardo to finish the race in fourth position, and set the best time of the day. The Australian was also the best-placed driver to start the race on soft tyres; the top six riders all started on supersoft tyres.

As temperatures dropped, both environmentally and on the track, the track became progressively faster, which is why the teams had to monitor the wear and degradation of the tires with particular attention. But both compounds confirmed expectations, allowing the riders to always push to the maximum.

Pirelli Motorsport Director Paul Hembery said: “Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton on winning the title, and also to Nico Rosberg, who has been a fantastic competitor all year. The tires performed as we expected, in line with the data we had collected before the race. We saw a great variety of strategies, with Massa showing the speed of the supersoft in the closing stages of the race, and Ricciardo achieving an excellent result despite starting from the pitlane on the softs. A fascinating finale to a gripping season; but we are already looking ahead to 2015, because the last tests of this season will take place here in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday and Wednesday, during which our new tires for 2015 will debut."