Pirelli does not expect surprises at today’s Imola race

F1 Grand Prix, GP Emilia-Romagna, Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari

Considering the length of the pit lane, the low degradation and the difficulty of overtaking, Pirelli suggests that the one-stop strategy will emerge as the fastest approach at today’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.

Oscar Piastri set the benchmark in today's incident-filled qualifying session at the Made in Italy e dell’Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix to secure his third career pole position after his results earlier this year in Shanghai and Sakhir.

Reigning champion Max Verstappen finished just fractions behind, followed by Mercedes driver George Russell while Lando Norris failed to put a good lap together, and finished down in P4.

As for the tyre compounds, there was something to watch for this weekend as Pirelli brought its brand-new C6 compound to Imola. was far more variety than usual in terms of Saturday tyre use.

After teams had saved their hards on the opening day of the weekend, the white-walled made its first appearance of the weekend in final practice, with the Aston Martin pair of Alonso and Stroll completing some runs with them and they will therefore only have one set each available for the race.

Alonso and Stroll also used a set of Softs. Lando Norris also did a scrubbing-in lap on a set of C4s. The Alpine, Haas and Sauber drivers only used the C6, with the other drivers splitting runs between the Soft and Medium.

Qualifying saw drivers prefer the red C6, but there were several splashes of yellow. Aston Martin took advantage of having more sets of Mediums than the rest by doing three runs on this compound – two in Q2 and one in Q3. Russell set the third fastest time on his only set of C5s, thus sacrificing the possibility of using them as a new set on which to start the race, in favour of seeing how effective they were over a flying lap.

Analyzing the tyre behaviour at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari, Pirelli’s motorsport director Mario Isola track evolution might have contributed to the fact that drivers were unable to extract the peak performance of the brand-new C6 compound.

“This qualifying session needs to be analysed carefully in terms of tyre behaviour, as it produced many interesting insights. Everyone was keen to see how the C6 would perform in qualifying, comparing it to the C5.

“From the initial data and listening to the immediate comments from the teams and drivers, we can say that the performance difference between the two softest compounds in the 2025 range is relatively small, which is what was predicted.

“What we saw today, on a track that didn’t evolve much compared to the first two hours of free practice, was that it wasn’t easy for the drivers to extract the full potential from the C6. Keep in mind that this compound had never been run on the 2025 cars and during the end-of-season test in Abu Dhabi, only eight of today’s 20 drivers tried it.

“So it’s likely that they need to get to understand it better in order to get the most out of it. This meant that some drivers preferred to go with the C5, a compound they know well, given that it was already the qualifying tyre for the previous two races in Jeddah and Miami.

“They chose to sacrifice a bit of grip in exchange for the lap time advantage that comes from the predictability of a tyre with which they have more experience and more data.

As for strategy, Pirelli expects that the one-stop is will be the quickest approach today as the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari is a track where overtaking is rather complicated.

Things are made even more complicated by the fact that there is only one DRS zone and also because this is the longest pit lane of the season in terms of time lost during a pit stop.

“Clearly, the combination of Medium and Hard, with a stop between laps 17 and 23, is the most likely. As an alternative, some drivers might prefer to go for a longer first stint, starting on the Hard, in the hope of an eventual Safety Car, in which case the switch to Medium would be between laps 37 and 43.

“A two-stop strategy is not out of the question in terms of total race time, but the factors just mentioned mean it is at a disadvantage. For anyone attempting this, the best combinations would be Medium-Hard-Hard”, concluded Isola.