CarlosFerreira wrote:...and another thing. I was looking at the nominations for IIDOTR, and Sutil seems to wiping the floor with the competition. Now, it's certainly a great story that a guy that's been away for a year can lead a race so confidently for so many laps, but his finishing position and di Resta's comments suggest something else: first, that this year's Force India is indeed a good car; and second, that the super softs Pirelli took to Australia were behind Sutil's performance.
Now, don't get me wrong. Sutil did a great job, extracting the best from the fact that he was in the right place at the right time. Because of the tyre situation, di Resta (and all the other driver who made it to Q3) found themselves stopping ridiculously early and falling into traffic, while Adrian kept his cool, stayed out of trouble and pounded the track at a good rate to find himself P1. The pay-off came in the last laps, when he was encumbered with the super softs, and promptly fell like a rock into di Resta's clutches.
Now, this is not me propping up di Resta or snipping at Sutil, but it raises the question of what to do next week. If the tyres have the same behaviour, what do you do in Q3? Do you just tour around once in the mediums, in the expectation that everyone else will qualify in the supersofts and come unstuck in the race? Mercedes has done such things in the past; I can see Ferrari doing it as well, and the strategists in Red Bull are not idiotic. McLaren needs a silver bullet (if they make Q3 at all). So... is anyone going to actually go for pole in Q3?
Get a grip, Pirelli.
In theory, it is less likely that Malaysia will see a repeat of what happened in Australia because the tyre allocation is more sensible this time around. Pirelli are bringing the medium and hard tyres for Malaysia due to the higher lateral loads from the higher average corner speeds, so with only one step between the compounds rather than two the difference in degradation and overall performance should be smaller.
It also has to be said that the much colder conditions on Sunday (about 22ºC track temp against 35ºC on Friday) played their part, since there are some reports that suggest the super soft tyres were not dropping off quite so badly on Friday when the track temperatures were higher. If anything, the tyres may have been cold graining rather than wearing out - Sutil's times actually improved quite significantly in the final three or four laps (he managed to get back into the mid 1m31s bracket for the final two laps), which was actually not that far off what he was doing on the medium tyres and suggests that his problems might have been transitory in nature.
Anyway, back to Malaysia - in this situation I think that, with the difference being less marked, it is less likely that the teams will intentionally sit out Q3 unless they are certain to qualify in 10th place - track position would probably be considered worth the trade off for slightly reduced tyre life as the tyres are less likely to burn out so rapidly. Perhaps Pirelli should give more consideration to just having one rather than two steps in compound per weekend, as that would provide less of an incentive to sit out Q3?
