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THE RACE FROM
A TYRE POINT OF VIEW
* Max Verstappen won the FORMULA 1 PIRELLI GRAND PRIX DU CANADA 2023. It was
his 41st victory, which puts him level with Ayrton Senna in fifth place on
the all-time winners list which is headed by Lewis Hamilton on 103.
* This was Red Bull’s 100th win from 355 Grand Prix starts. Its first dates
back to 19 April 2009 when Sebastian Vettel won in China. Red Bull is the
fifth team to have reached a century of wins in a category headed by Ferrari
(242), followed by McLaren (183), Mercedes (125) and Williams (114).
* Of the top ten finishers, six drivers stopped twice with only four making
just the one stop. However, it is worth noting that Perez’s second pit stop,
just two laps from the end was carried out purely to allow him to pick up
the extra point for setting the fastest race lap.
* 16 drivers opted to start on the Mediums: three of the remaining four –
Perez, Bottas and Magnussen – chose the Hard tyre, while only Gasly
preferred to start on the Softs.
* As expected, the C5 was the least used compound in the race, completing
just 12 laps: ten of those were in Gasly’s first stint and two with Perez at
the end of the race.
* The most used compound was the C3 (70.4% of all laps completed) but a
significant number of laps (28.7%) were run on the C4.
* In terms of stint length, the standout performance came from Albon, who is
no stranger to this feat, running 58 laps on a set of Hards. He finished in
an impressive seventh place. Leclerc drove the longest stint on Medium tyres
doing 39 laps.
MARIO ISOLA - MOTORSPORT DIRECTOR
“It was a very
interesting race, the most closely balanced so far this season, as can be
seen from the results sheet, with four drivers from four different teams all
finishing in the space of under 20 seconds. Yesterday’s prediction that a
two-stop strategy was the best option was confirmed as the top three all
went down this route, even if they each managed it in different ways.
However, the one stop proved to be a valid alternative, as demonstrated by
the two Ferrari drivers: Leclerc and Sainz went to over half-distance on the
Mediums without any significant degradation in terms of tyre performance, a
sign that their car is making progress on the set-up front.
Temperatures were lower today than on Friday and that contributed to
reducing the risk of overheating the tyres. Another factor that played an
important role in tyre management was the fact the track rubbered-in very
quickly during the race, even though it was initially very dirty after it
had rained for almost all of Saturday.
Personally, it was an honour for me, on behalf of Pirelli, the race’s Title
Sponsor, to hand over the winning constructors’ trophy to Adrian Newey,
someone who has contributed so much to the history of this team and of our
sport and indeed, who continues to do so, on the very day when Red Bull
celebrated its 100th win.”
NEXT UP FOR
OUR F1 TYRES
The next race takes place at the Red Bull Ring from 30 June to 2 July.
The Austrian Grand Prix will be the second round of the season, after the
one in Azerbaijan, to be run to the new F1 Sprint format. Qualifying for the
main race takes place on Friday afternoon, while track action on Saturday is
entirely given over to the Sprint. First, there’s the Sprint Shootout, with
the short 24 lap race following later in the afternoon. In Spielberg,
drivers will use the same compounds as in Montreal: the C3 as Hard, C4 as
Medium and the C5 as Soft. As with all F1 Sprint weekends, each driver will
have just 12 sets of dry weather tyres available to them instead of 13. |