Lewis Hamilton is concerned Mercedes’ tyre problems from Silverstone will be repeated at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 sees the latest race ever in Barcelona after being rescheduled from its traditional May slot and will now face the heat of the Catalan summer as a result.
Indeed, temperatures are set to reach 30 degrees Celsuis on all three days and that, combined with the long radius corners that make the circuit tough on tyres to begin with, means Pirelli is anticipating another challenging race.
“Although it will be the third time that the teams drive at the Circuit de Catalunya this year, following the two pre-season tests, the conditions they will encounter this weekend are likely to be very different,” said Pirelli motorsport chief Mario Isola.
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“The expected high temperatures in Barcelona in mid-August will increase thermal degradation on a track already well-known for being tough on tyres, so it’s going to be particularly important to manage them and control any overheating that affects traction.
“With the current cars being faster than ever – as Silverstone recently confirmed – and the Spanish Grand Prix never being run in August before, this should be the most demanding race for tyres we’ve seen at the Circuit de Catalunya.”
And that has Mercedes and Hamilton worried.
“I expect that track, we will probably have similar problems to what we had here, maybe last week, maybe, especially if it’s hot, probably… maybe won’t be as bad as today but still going to be a challenge,” the championship leader said.
“It (the tyre selection) is going to be the same as last week (the British GP)? So still going to be a serious challenge for us.”
Verstappen himself though is less convinced a repeat of his victory a week ago is likely simply because Pirelli will return to the hardest three compounds.
“We had a good day so we just need to be happy about that but we can also be realistic,”said the Dutchman.
“We are still lacking pace in qualifying, quite a bit, so we need to solve that first as well and of course we go back to harder tyres in Barcelona.
“Of course, we saw last week that on those harder tyres we are still quite a bit off so I don’t expect any miracles there. I know it’s a hard track on tyres but with these hard tyres you can push quite a bit, harder than what we’ve done here.”