While the riders arrive in dribs and drabs in the Yas Marina paddock, you can touch the different emotional states with your own hands just a few hours before the start of the last race of the season.
Smiles and ‘fists’ of greeting for most of the insiders, low looks and quick pace for the men in blue (Red Bull) and in black (Mercedes). The different scenarios that may occur in the 58 scheduled laps, crucial for the assignment of the race and the World title, will hold the spot.
The question marks are mostly related to the different compounds of tires that will mount Lewis Hamilton (medium) and poleman Max Verstappen (soft). According to the Pirelli simulations (which all focus on a single stop), the choice of Mercedes is the one that should ensure a slightly better pace, with a transition to hard between laps 19 and 26.
Those who start with the soft (all in the top 10 apart from the two Mercedes and Tsunoda) will have to switch to the hard between laps 13 and 20. For Verstappen it will be crucial to be able to take the lead at the first corner, and try to stretch in the top ten come back, before the degradation of his set begins. The wider his margin before the stop, the greater the possibility of repelling an attempted ‘overcut’ by Hamilton.
But the big question mark is related to the grip of the hard compound. Those who start with the soft will have to cover between 40 and 45 laps with the set of ‘white’, a distance greater than at least 10 laps compared to those who will start with the medium.
At Mercedes they hope that this gap can make the difference in the last 10/15 laps of the race, but it is an assumption that will also be linked to the progress of the race and to the temperature, which today (three hours from the start) is slightly higher. compared to the previous days.
The availability of tires is of no concern. Both Hamilton and Verstappen have a set of new hard drives, and in the case of the two Mercedes there is also a set of mediums available which, however, will hardly be used.
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