MARIO ISOLA – PIRELLI DIRECTOR OF MOTORSPORT
“In this Grand Prix, all the excitement was condensed into the opening laps, with drivers overtaking and repassing each other with some thrilling moves. Then, once the situation stabilised, the race became very linear with all drivers trying to extend their first stints as much as possible, depending on which compounds they had chosen for the start. Unlike last year, there was practically no graining today and on this very smooth track surface, performance degradation was pretty much zero. This meant that all the drivers could more or less chose the moment to pit based on their track position, while others gambled going much longer than the window predicted based on how free practice had gone, in the hope of a possible Safety Car, having nothing left to lose.
“We saw some cases of blistering across the front axle, but not enough to have a significant impact on car performance. In terms of wear, it’s clear that those drivers who went beyond the 40 lap mark on their first stint, came very close to or in some cases, even exceeded the wear limit, but without losing performance.
“All in all, evaluating tyre performance in this Grand Prix, I would say they were too good. It will be important for us to analyse the data very well to understand how to proceed with the development of compounds for next year. On this topic, it’s worth noting that in less than 48 hours, we will be back on track in Monza for two days of testing of 2026 tyres, working with Red Bull Racing (Verstappen/Tsunoda and Aston Martin (Drugovich) on Tuesday and with Williams (Albon/Sainz) and Racing Bulls (Lawson/Hadjar) the following day.”
