Top teams all seem to have different strategies in Japan

Pirelli indicated ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix what the fastest strategy should be for the race. The strategy will also very much depend on the tyres the teams have left and the latter varies quite a bit.

Pirelli have proposed four strategies ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix. In all four, the Italian tyre supplier opts for a two-stop strategy. The option that Pirelli deem fastest, is to start on soft and then two stints on a different set of hard tyres.

Red Bull Racing opts for this strategy

However, a lot of variation is possible. For instance, Pirelli also suggests doing medium-hard-medium and soft-hard-medium is also an option. The last option is to use the hardest tyre as much as possible here at Suzuka: namely start on medium and then two stints on the hard tyre.

Before the weekend, teams already estimate what they are going to do in order to have the right tyres left for the race. Based on this, you can then often see what the teams' idea is. For instance, the drivers of Red Bull Racing and Ferrari have one fresh set of the hard tyre left, two fresh sets of mediums and three used sets of the soft tyre. So a good chance those teams will opt for medium-hard.

However, not every team has chosen that route. Mercedes and McLaren, for instance, each have two sets of the hard tyre and one set of mediums remaining. Aston Martin chose an even different route. Fernando Alonso, starting from P5, has one fresh set of tyres left from each compound. So there are likely to be many different strategies on show at Suzuka.