The “strange” tyre delta that opens door for F1 Spanish GP strategy intrigue

Potential pre-race showers, a powerful undercut and a soft tyre that is fast but fragile have opened the door for some strategy intrigue in Formula 1’s Spanish Grand Prix.

Rather than the high degradation circuit pushing teams and drivers to go conservative with a boring one-stopper, what is unfolding at Barcelona could trigger plenty of action – and even some aggressive three-stoppers.

That is because the lap-time delta between the three compounds that F1 tyre supplier Pirelli has brought means that the preferred race tyre is actually the soft – even though it is acknowledged to effectively be a one-lap qualifying tyre.

The hard, which is the C1 compound, has been taken off the table as a preferred option because it is not delivering much pace.

Instead, the soft (C3) is so much better in lap time terms – up to 1.2 seconds per lap quicker than the medium, and around 1.8 seconds up on the hard.

As Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra said: “It [the C1] is more thermally resilient, but it’s quite slow compared to the C2 and C3 basically… so the C1 will not really be used. We don’t see an advantage from using the C1.

“We know that the C3 is a one-lap tyre, but anyway it is providing a much higher grip level compared to C2. And this means that on longer stints, while degrading, it is faster than the C2 over a stint – even though it is becoming slower.”

The characteristics that are likely to push teams towards the highest degrading tyre tee up an afternoon where looking after the tyres will be critical – but exploiting the undercut could be the name of the game.

With the fastest strategy on paper looking like a soft/medium/soft, Pirelli’s head of F1 and car racing Mario Isola reckons that a one-stopper is off the cards because the soft holds such an advantage – despite its limitations.

“The advantage that you have on pace is clearly what we believe is pushing the teams to choose the soft at the start of the race,” he said.

“It seems maybe a bit strange, because with a heavy car with a full tank obviously you increase the level of degradation. But in terms of a medium/hard strategy [for a one-stop], the level of management is so high that is not convenient. Basically, you lose a lot of time.

“Here, it is also possible to overtake so there is no reason to manage the pace so much to try to go on a one-stop.

“It’s also true that if the level of degradation of the soft is higher than expected, it…