Pirelli saw tyres behave differently than expected

One of the interesting aspects of the sprint race format is that teams are completely free in their choice of tyres at the start of the race. If during the sprint race it turns out that a certain tyre performs better than expected, they can still adjust their choice of tyre for the race.

And that's exactly what seems to be happening this weekend at the Italian Grand Prix. It was thought beforehand that the soft tyre would struggle in hot conditions, but during the sprint race we found out, thanks to McLaren, that this tyre can hold up quite well.

"The early safety car in sprint qualifying gave the tyres some respite, but the soft performed better than expected, with a very low level of degradation despite the hot temperatures," said Pirelli's Mario Isola in his review of Saturday.

This means that the red tyre will probably be seen more often at the start of the race on Sunday. According to Isola it is even profitable to switch to the hard tyre after that. "For tomorrow's grand prix we expect all three compounds to play a role in the race strategies," he said.