Australian GP: Pirelli Qualifying Review

By Courtesy of Pirelli
March 25 2017

 
 Pirelli Qualifying Review Australian GP
 
Pirelli
 

The extra speed from the 2017 cars and tyres meant that the fastest-ever lap of Melbourne was already set in FP3 this morning by Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari, but in qualifying Lewis Hamilton went even quicker for Mercedes on the P Zero Purple ultrasoft tyre. All the teams used the ultrasoft from the start of Q1, apart from both Ferraris. Vettel also completed Q1 on this compound. Track temperatures were 33 degrees centigrade at the end of qualifying, close to the time that the race will also finish, so similar conditions are expected tomorrow.

MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF CAR RACING
“Lap times were around two seconds faster than last year, giving us a competitive and spectacular qualifying. There was low degradation on the compounds used in FPs, which makes a one-stop strategy likely for tomorrow, depending of course on track temperature. If that is higher than data collected during the weekend, this could push it towards two stops. With these cars being so different to the previous generation, and no previous race data to fall back on, tomorrow’s strategy is a bit harder to predict than usual.”
  
HOW THE TYRES BEHAVED TODAY
FREE PRACTICE 3 – TOP 3 TIMES
DRIVER 		TIME 		COMPOUND 	
Vettel 		1m 23.380s 	ULTRASOFT NEW
Bottas		1m 23.859s	ULTRASOFT NEW
Hamilton 	1m 23.870s 	ULTRASOFT NEW

QUALIFYING TOP 10
DRIVER 		TIME 		COMPOUND 
Hamilton 	1m22.188s 	ULTRASOFT NEW
Vettel		1m22.456s	ULTRASOFT NEW 
Bottas 		1m22.481s 	ULTRASOFT NEW
Raikkonen	1m23.033s	ULTRASOFT NEW 
Verstappen 	1m23.485s 	ULTRASOFT NEW
Grosjean	1m24.074s	ULTRASOFT NEW
Massa 		1m24.443s 	ULTRASOFT NEW
Sainz		1m24.487s	ULTRASOFT NEW
Kvyat 		1m24.512s	ULTRASOFT NEW
Ricciardo	-

MOST LAPS BY COMPOUND SO FAR
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 		LAPS 
SOFT 		Wehrlein 	25
SUPERSOFT	Ericsson	24
SUPERSOFT	Vettel		24
ULTRASOFT 	Hamilton 	25 

BEST TIME BY COMPOUND SO FAR
COMPOUND 	DRIVER 		TIME
SOFT 		Hamilton 	1m 25.096s
SUPERSOFT	Hamilton	1m 24.542s
ULTRASOFT 	Hamilton 	1m 22.188s
 
Pirelli Tyres
 

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