Strategies to discover: the overcut could be a surprise

After the Barcelona and Austria Grands Prix characterized by strong tire degradation, Silverstone returns to a strategically calmer race. The difficult thing will be to guess the right moment to return, given that the low wear of the tires leaves the door open to overcutting to try to gain position in the pits. Dario Marrafuschi, Pirelli’s motorsport director, illustrates the strategic framework for the Grand Prix. Saturday’s clues “In the sprint we saw widespread use of the medium tyre”, explains Marrafuschi. “Only three cars used the soft, but it was clear that the medium was the race compound. The degradation was decidedly limited, in fact practically zero in terms of tenths of a second lost per lap, so much so that Antonelli even managed to set the fastest lap at the last one. Tire wear was very regular, we didn’t encounter any graining or overheating phenomena from blistering.” According to Pirelli, Silverstone will be a single pit stop race: “Considering that practically all the teams have preserved a set of hard tires during the weekend and that the simulations tell us that the one stop strategy is the fastest, the medium-hard combination should be the favourite. Even if I don’t see a big advantage, the opposite is also possible, i.e. hard-medium. Potentially there could also be a medium-soft strategy, making the first stint very long and then fitting the softs at the end.” Marrafuschi, however, excludes the two-stop strategy, unless the Safety Car or Virtual Safety Car intervenes. In fact, the time lost in the pit lane at Silverstone was 22 seconds, another factor that pushes teams towards single stops. Watch out for the overcut. The extremely low degradation reduces the power of the undercut, so much so that Marrafuschi does not exclude that the winning move to gain a position could be to stop after the opponent: “We will find out during the race. However, given that it will be a medium-hard strategy and that the performance gap between the two compounds will be around 6 tenths of a second, if the degradation is actually zero and if you are not immediately fast on the hard tire, the overcut could be a tool. We will see it based on the race pace.” The race pace will be limited above all by the shape of the most stressed tyres. “At Silverstone we have a limiting side, which is the left,” explains Marrafuschi. “The front left is the most stressed tire and the rear left is the one immediately after. It is a limitation that occurs mainly due to slipping in the high speed sections. Turn 1 and turn 9, i.e. Copse, are certainly the most stressful, as they are bends towards the right, which therefore stress the front left. So is the Luffield, the hairpin towards the right which, even if it is not high speed, still causes a lot of slipping on the front left. I would therefore speak more of a stressed side rather than an axle”, concludes the head of Pirelli Motorsport.

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-07-05 10:48:00