IdeFan wrote:Didn't it rain overnight every night of that weekend? IIRC this prevented the circuit from rubbering in properly which exacerbated the tyre problems. Bridgestone also brought soft tyres to that race (I know there was Super-Soft, but I can't remember what the other one was, soft or medium?) so I would expect Pirelli to bring hard tyres this time around.
I am not expecting an exceptionally bad races as far as tyres are concerned, certainly no worse than Sepang (3 or 4 stops).
TBH I can't remember if it did rain overnight last year, but I certainly recall that last year Friday & Saturday track temperatures were fairly low. Whereas come Sunday the temperatures were higher, which was part of the reason the track had not rubbered in as one would have expected come that stage of the weekend. However I think part of the problem was also the Candian track surface, in particular the type of tarmac they are forced to use.
The Candian race organisers are forced to use a completely different type of tarmac than other F1 tracks, because Montreal winter's can be bitterly cold (like -30 degrees) & their summers can become pretty hot also. Therefore these changes in temperature causes any normal track surface to break up within a relatively short time scale.
Therefore the Montreal surface proved to be very abbrasive on the 2010 slick tyres, which caused graining for most of the teams (particularly on the hard tyres). One of the biggest suprises from the 2010 race, was how quickly the hard tyres deterierated compared to the softs in the early stages of the race. You may recall that Red Bull started on the hard tyres expecting to go much longer than it rivals, before they had to make their 1st stop. However Red Bull were amazed at just how quickly the 'hards' wore out compared to the softs in the early stages.
With this in mind, therefore I question whether it is just a case of Pirelli bringing a harder compound than Bridgestone did last year? Perhaps it is more a case of Pirelli bringing a compound which will "bite" more into the abrasive surface (especially in colder temperatures), therefore lay more rubber down & thus not cause graining problems as easily as the Brigdestone's did.
On the question of what will happen this year, I agree with IdeFan in that I am not expecting an exceptionally bad race as far as tyres are concerned, certainly no worse than Sepang (3 or 4 stops). Personally I think any more than 4 stops & the race just becomes a pit stop fest, thus extermely difficult to read from a strategy point of view.
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