Verstappen or the McLaren have tyre advantage in Belgium? Pirelli shares options

12:30, 27 Jul

byHidde Korte

After Max Verstappen managed to win the Sprint on Saturday, it's time for the Grand Prix today in Belgium. What tyres do the drivers have at their disposal?

Due to the Sprint weekend, only one free practice session took place this weekend. There were also two qualifying sessions, one for the sprint and one for the main race.

Max Verstappen is the only one of the frontrunners with two sets of hard tyres. The Dutchman only has 'just' two sets of medium left. One of the sets is new and the other has been used before. The McLaren drivers have an additional set of used medium tyres, while Leclerc has another new set of mediums at his disposal.

The complete top 4 drivers on the grid have no new softs left, only three used ones.

Pirelli shares possible strategies, does rain spoil the plans?

According to Pirelli, a two-stop strategy is the best for the Belgian Grand Prix, with the drivers starting on the softs and then stopping twice for mediums.

One-stop strategies are also an option, something George Russell pulled off the previous year at this track. However, the Briton was disqualified for his car being under the minimum weight limit.

Pirelli boss Mario Isola told GPblog that the hard tyre should better not be used, due to the expected rain.

"You have not just the rain level that is changing, also the temperature from one day to another. It's completely different. We were estimating strategies using the hard compound until Friday, that was good weather, warm temperature. Now clearly with a hard, that is quite hard it's difficult to warm up the tyre properly. If it is dry I believe that majority will go on medium and soft."

However, it doesn't look like it will stay dry. The Formula 3 race this morning was already cancelled and also in Formula 2 we saw that the weather had a great impact on the race.

"The moment for the crossover is really the key in changing conditions, because as you said one lap more or one lap less can make a big difference. If you are too early and you move too slick too early you can easily lose eight to nine, ten seconds in one lap. They are difficult to recover. If you are one lap late, the opposite, but you can lose quite a lot of time."

"The medium and the soft are close. So I believe that the teams are more in favour of the medium, because the medium gives you more flexibility. You have the possibility to have a longer stint, the level of degradation is manageable, the performance is close to the soft, and the working range is not much different. So if there is a condition that is moving from intermediate to dry, probably most of them are moving to the medium," says Isola.

The Italian also talked about in what conditions will the race go ahead in his opinion. Read that story here!