godlameroso wrote:Agree. You also have to consider that it's Spa, the chance of cool weather is almost a given, a high probability of clouds, and a chance of rain. Not to mention, the front tires are the ones that take all the abuse. The supersoft tire will probably be good for 8-9 laps not even good enough for a 3 stopper, the soft probably for 12-14 laps so a conservative two stopper, but the medium can probably make it just under half race distance. So with the medium you could have a more aggressive two stopper, you'd have to set your car up for sector two, but the added drag would hurt your fuel consumption. SS S M seems to be the best strategy for Spa. That would give you 7 good laps from the SS, 14 from the soft, and you'd try to finish with the medium
This is a much too conservative prediction. The best measure this year so far was China, where they did more laps on the SuperSoft than last year on the Soft. New tarmac is spoiling the comparison for Hungary, but the same picture there with more or less the same number of laps on a softer sort of tire.
Vettel nearly pulled a 1-Stop last year, so a SS-S-S strategy will be easy to do.
The tire choice for Merc is not surprising. They are planing for harder tires to be more flexible as they have more than enough pace. And I guess they will do a lot of testing during FP1 and 2.