After Charles Leclerc’s different Pirelli tyre selection for Australian GP, Red Bull Racing’s Pierre Gasly has done it for F1 Bahrain GP.
The new tyre format with only three colours and names made its debut in Australian GP with the focus simply on white, yellow and red as hard, medium and soft, even though Pirelli has five slick compounds homologated for the 2019 F1 season.
They brought C2, C3 and C4 in Australia which was used as hard, medium and soft respectively. For next weekend’s Bahrain GP, they have C1, C2 and C3 which will be used as hard, medium and soft compounds respectively.
The trend will continue on for the rest of the F1 season. Like Leclerc differed from the other top teams in Australia, Gasly has done it this time with eight sets of the red-coloured C3 (soft) compound unlike the nine chosen by his teammate and Mercedes and Ferrari.
Gasly has the two McLaren and Williams drivers with him with the eight sets, with the Frenchman, Williams’s George Russell and the two McLaren drivers going for the same choice in terms of three sets of medium (C2) and two of hard (C1).
Williams’ Robert Kubica has four sets of medium and one of hard. Meanwhile, joining Verstappen, Mercedes and Ferrari with nine sets of soft compound will be the two drivers of Haas, Racing Point and Alfa Romeo Racing.
From among them, only Haas’ Kevin Magnussen has a different choice with two sets each of medium and hard, while all the rest 10 drivers have all gone for three sets of medium and just the one set of hard compound.
With 10 sets of soft compound will be the two Renault and Toro Rosso drivers with Daniel Ricciardo the sole on a different strategy having opted for one set of medium and two hard, while the rest three have two sets of medium and one hard.
As the rule states, the teams get 13 set of tyres for the whole Bahrain GP weekend, with one set of the softest compound to be kept by the Top 10 drivers to use in Q3. After the completion of qualifying, the Top 10 drivers will have to return that set, while the other drivers can keep it for the race.
For the races, each driver has to keep one set each of the two harder compounds available for the weekend, while the rest 10 sets they are free to choose from the three available compounds for the particular driver.
