In clinching this past weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, Nico Rosberg – behind the wheel of a Mercedes – and his crew perfectly managed their allocation of Pirelli’s P Zero White medium tire and P Zero Yellow soft tire, according to Paul Hembery, the company’s motorsports director.
Having claimed a dominant pole position by half a second, Rosberg took his debut victory and the first win for Mercedes since the 1955 Italian Grand Prix by using a two-stop strategy.
Rosberg’s pace at the beginning of the race was enough to ensure that he was able to complete his first pit stop without losing the lead, and from there he was able to control his advantage and complete the race on the medium tires.
Tire choices and pit stop strategy set up a duel in the closing stages as Jenson Button – on a fresh set of P Zero White medium tires – attempted to chase down the leader, who was running on an older set of the medium tires.
Although Button – who stopped three times – was delayed by a problem during his final pit stop, “he was just one of many drivers to mount a spectacular charge during the final stint in Shanghai,” Hembery reports. With four laps to go, Button passed Sebastian Vettel to claim the runner-up spot.
Vettel chose a two-stop strategy, but was forced to defend a challenge from Lewis Hamilton, who claimed the final podium place despite making one more pit stop than Vettel.
Hamilton now leads the drivers’ championship; he was one of the few drivers to stick with the soft tire during his second; the majority of other competitors went to the harder tire on their first stops.
“A wide variety of strategies were seen all the way down the pit lane, with many teams pushing the limits of performance,” says Hembery.
Kimi Raikkonen completed a 28-lap final stint on the P Zero White medium tire, which at one point boosted him up to second place before he dropped down the order as the tires went off. Such was the closeness of the action that Fernando Alonso and Kamui Kobayashi, who finished ninth and 10th respectively, set an identical lap time in the closing stages of the race – despite adopting completely different strategies.
Sergio Perez, whose tire strategy helped him to challenge for victory in Malaysia, stayed out longest on the soft tire at the beginning of the race, moving onto the harder tire on lap 16. The longest first stint of all, 18 laps, was run by Felipe Massa – who was one of only four drivers (together with both Toro Rossos and Bruno Senna) to start on the medium tire.
“As expected, we saw a high degree of tire degradation in the tough conditions of China, with the front-left tire in particular coming under particular stress,” says Hembery. “This gave the opportunity for the teams to try out a wide variety of different strategies, which resulted in spectacular yet clean wheel-to-wheel racing that, if anything, surpassed even last year’s Chinese Grand Prix.”
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