JUNE 6, 2011

Montreal: same tyres, different expectations

This weekend's Canadian GP, round 7 of the F1 world championship, will again see Pirelli's soft and supersoft compound tyres in use, but very different wear patterns to Monaco are predicted.

This weekend's Canadian GP, round 7 of the F1 world championship, will again see Pirelli's soft and supersoft compound tyres in use, but very different wear patterns to Monaco are predicted.

Last year, on Bridgestone's control rubber, the Canadian GP saw 61 tyre stops, an average of 2.5 per car, and Pirelli is expecting a busy afternoon this time around too.

The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is much faster than Monaco with a low-grip surface, parameters that impact heavily on tyre wear. There are also areas of heavy braking and maximum traction.

Pirelli's motorsport director Paul Hembery said: "Monaco was a fantastic race, with three drivers battling closely for the win even though they were using three very different strategies. From the data, we can see that Sebastian Vettel's tyres would have gone the distance if he had continued to drive on them in the same way that he had been doing up to the red flag period. This means that he could have covered 62 laps, the equivalent of more than 200kms, on the soft tyre, with an extremely close finish.

"The characteristics of Canada mean that we're unlikely to see a one-stop strategy this weekend, but we're hoping that the racing will be just as close and that the opportunities for overtaking will give teams even more possibilities than Monaco in terms of race strategy."

Montreal, which was a 'tyre race' last year, is one of the most difficult tracks to predict performance due to its wide wide variety of grip levels and inconsistent surface.

On Friday in Canada, drivers will be given two additional sets of Pirelli's new medium compound slicks to evaluate for the future during the two free practice sessions.