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Engineers Red Bull Racing and Mercedes differ about medium tire advantage
- GPblog.com
Red Bull Racing was a bit disappointed with the delay on Mercedes afterwards, but also very happy with the fact that they are allowed to start on the yellow tyre during the race. However, at Mercedes they don't see the advantage of that.
In the second part of qualifying Max Verstappen chose to drive his fastest time on the medium tire. The fact that he was the only one who managed to do this, was quite a feat. Red Bull engineer Paul Monaghan explains why it can be an advantage.
"The soft tyre fell apart pretty fast on Friday and tomorrow it will get warmer, so they'll fall apart even faster. In addition, it's always useful to have two different strategies when you're not on pole". So if it doesn't work out with Verstappen, they still have Albon, which is on the same strategy as Mercedes.
At Mercedes they understand why Red Bull chose this strategy, but they don't see it as a danger. "Based on Friday they probably already took into account that they would be behind us. They started Max on the medium tyre that lasts a little longer than our Softs, but in terms of pace we have not seen much difference between the tyres".