(Pirelli Motorsport Media)
Practice for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix took place
today as in the Principality as we all know the race schedule is structured
slightly differently as the first on track action happens on a Thursday instead
of the usual Friday as on a Monaco Grand Prix weekend, Friday is a public
holiday and therefore a rest day for Formula One.
This year Pirelli chose to bring a brand new super soft
compound tyre for the Monaco Grand Prix. It is the first time this season that
we have seen the red walled compound however during today’s afternoon session
due to the fact that was a wash out only one set of the Super Soft compound was
used which covered just three KM’s.
Reigning world champion Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time
for Mercedes in both of today’s free practice sessions. In the opening session
this morning, Hamilton set a time of 1m 18.750s on new set of the Soft compound
tyres while in the second session his time of 1m 17.192s was also set on a new
set of Soft tyres.
During this morning’s session, Scuderia Toro Rosso’s Max
Verstappen and Infiniti Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo who ended up second
and third respectively set their fastest times on used Soft rubber.
In total today 2,668KM were completed using the yellow
walled Soft compound tyre with 57 sets of that compound used over the course of
the day while the longest stint on those tyres was 39 laps.
A total of 33KM’s were completed on the Intermediate tyre
with 20 sets used while 3 sets of the full wet tyre were utilised covering 46KM’s.
Speaking following today’s action, Pirelli Motorsport Director Paul Hembery commented
saying:
‘We had very little meaningful running today,
which means that our new supersoft tyres will be run properly for the first
time during Saturday morning’s session. This is clearly going to be a crucial
hour when it comes to determining race set-up and strategy. While it’s hard to
extrapolate much data from today, the new surface should have the effect of
decreasing wear and degradation still further, on what is already the least
strenuous track for tyres of the year. This should make a one-stop strategy
entirely achievable, although some teams may try to gain an advantage by doing
something different. Most of all, I feel sorry for the fans today who sat
through a lot of rain for very little action. With such a small amount of data
for the teams to fall back on though, it’s more likely that we will see an
unpredictable qualifying and race over the weekend. Before then, we’re looking
forward to demonstrating a new GP2 tyre concept tomorrow, which underlines our
capacity to produce a variety of different tyre solutions to meet any request.’
© Ben Johnston 2015
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