Is tyre management more challenging this season?
Tyre management is more challenging this year than the previous season simply because the tyres are new and we are again in a learning curve. At every race we discover more about how these compounds behave. For example, at Sepang we had the new hard specification tyre, which we had no prior experience of in testing; we just had the practice sessions to learn about it. We tested with the other three compounds over the winter so we know more about them but still we have no data from races in previous seasons, as we had last year. This makes it a little bit more demanding. Also, we moved from grooved to slick tyres and these don’t react in the same way to graining and temperatures. Overall it is challenging but it is also very interesting. Does the bigger difference between compounds at each race make strategy more difficult? This year Bridgestone is bringing very different compounds in terms of stiffness and temperature range to each race. Last year, in Malaysia for example, we had the m
