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Sauber has tyre advantage says Bridgestone
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09 March 2010 @ 12:43 GMT - Roger Loop Bridgestone's analysis has revealed that the Sauber team is looking after its tyres the best and they could hustle the top four teams this season as a result. The outfit's new C29 has showed good pace during pre-season testing. The team hopes to deliver some surprising results this season and the fact that the tyres have less degradation will give them a boost. It allows the team to use softer more gripper tyres during the Q3 qualifying sessions and it will give consistency over the course of a race. The teams are allowed to change tyres but at the start of the race on full fuel loads drivers will have to look after the tyres to ensure they don't destroy them in the opening laps. Bridgestone's director of motorsport tyre development Hirohide Hamashima says the top four teams have the same type of degradation, but not Sauber. |
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"We have compared many teams' data and looking at the quick [four] teams - their degradation tendency is very, very similar. Once they have the 150kg start weight, with both the medium and soft compound, then there is little difference - so we could expect a very close pace. However, Sauber is more consistent," he said.
The Bahrain track is not hard on tyres, but Hamashima believes the difference between Sauber and the other teams is enough to offer the outfit strategy options that others do not have.
"Yes, it is possible," he said when asked if Sauber will be able to go for more marginal tyres than their rivals during qualifying. "With an easy car, you can have the possibility to do that. Somewhere like Barcelona will be very interesting - because the circuit is severe and the softer tyre may only be good to get one lap time before suffering big degradation in the race," he said.
"But even places like Monaco and Bahrain, which are very, very easy on tyres, the specification that shows the best lap time should be the best race tyre - which could make it interesting as well," he said.