mike wrote:if you drive on options at the start that mean you prime is likely not to last the rest till the end of the race and hence you will have to drive on options again, and you basically starting 25secs behind try to make up by option-heavy fuel and option-light fuel
Do you mean primes will not last 60% of the race distance? We saw drivers this year on a one-stop strategies doing just that. We also saw drivers going almost 50% of the race distance on options... Tire wear was not a huge issue this past season - the main reason we didn't see more one-stop strategies was that you lost a lot of time when you were running high-fuel, especially in the beginning of the race. With no re-fuelling this is taken out of the equation, and only tire wear is left to determine the number of stops. And since tire-wear isn't a huge issue, I believe one-stop strategies to be faster overall than two-stoppers most of the time. Even WITH refuelling, we saw Kobayashi on a one-stop strategy beat Trulli on a two-stopper in Abu Dhabi a couple of weeks ago...
(Also note that, even if you start on options and find you have to make a second stop for tires, you won't have to go back to options. You could also go for a second set of primes.)
In any case the optimum tire strategy will vary from track to track, it will especially depend on which compounds Bridgestone bring to the track. If it's super-softs + softs, I expect two-stoppers (but not at Monaco), but with soft + medium or soft + hard I expect one-stop strategies to be the norm, and I expect winning cars to start the race on options more often than not, simply because track-position is more important than anything else in F1. (Given that the option tire is in fact the faster tire, which strangely is not always true.)
timbo, I know that tire degradation is reduced in the final laps of the race because of rubber build-up, but this also varies a lot from track to track and compound to compound. And it doesn't change the fact that if you drive a longer first stint than your competitors, you WILL definately lose time and, crucially, positions to those drivers who make an earlier stop. These are positions which you will have to gain back
on the track before the end of the race if you want to win. At certain tracks where passing is "easy", this is maybe not a very big issue, but on tracks like Monaco or Hungaroring it means your chances to win are virtually zero.
I do expect the field to bunch-up in the latter part of the race, when drivers who made early stops will struggle on old tires, while drivers on fresher rubber will catch up and try to pass. It could get rather exciting! Much unlike this year, when you gained time by pitting late, meaning that the race was usually over after the final round of pit-stops.
to switch to a two-stopper.
