#F1 : Record Breaking Lap Sees Hamilton Take #BahrainGP Pole

Lewis Hamilton recovered from a mistake on the final corner of his 1^st lap in Q3 to set a record breaking pace as he snatched pole back from Nico Rosberg. His time of 01m29.43 seconds breaks a record that has stood since 2005, making the 1.6 Turbo Hybrid era time faster than Mark Webber’s V10 era time.

The Supersoft Pirelli was chosen across the board as all driver’s elected to go for the fastest compound of rubber in what turned into a one lap shoot out early on in Q1 and Q2. The fastest laps on the compound proving to be 2.5 seconds faster than the medium.

1Hamilton	01m29.493s	Supersoft	new
2Rosberg	01m29.570s	Supersoft	new
3Vettel	01m30.012s	Supersoft	new
4Raikkonen	01m30.244s	Supersoft	new
5Ricciardo	01m30.154s	Supersoft	new
6Bottas	01m31.853s	Supersoft	new
7Massa	01m31.155s	Supersoft	new
8Hulkenberg	01m31.620s	Supersoft	new

MEDIUM	Raikkonen	19 laps
SOFT	Magnussen	19laps
SUPERSOFT	Ricciardo	13laps

 

MEDIUM	Bottas	1m34.761s
SOFT	Rosberg	1m32.173s
SUPERSOFT	Hamilton	1m29.493

 

Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director: “We experienced falling temperatures in Sakhir that made the circuit slightly faster at the end of each session. We’re expecting two to three pit stops tomorrow. Most of the top drivers didn’t save fresh sets of tyres for the race, which adds another interesting aspect. The top eight qualifiers will all start on used supersoft. From our initial calculations, we can see that there are a number of potentially different ways to approach the race, with no single strategy that stands out as being obviously quickest. There will be a lot of data analysis tonight, which should lead to a tactically intriguing race tomorrow with many different schools of thought.”

How the tyres behaved today:
Medium Teams trying to reduce the number of pit stops will use this in the race.
Soft Likely to be used for the second stint: a large number of this compound available.
Supersoft About a second faster than the soft: but at the cost of a short opening stint.

Race strategy: This is one of the most interesting races strategically, with the tactics depending of course on each driver’s individual allocation. A three-stop strategy is theoretically quickest for the 57-lap race: start on supersoft, change to soft on lap 14, soft again on lap 29 and soft again on lap 43. If a driver has enough new supersofts available (around a second per lap faster than the soft) another effective strategy would be: start on supersoft, then change to supersoft again on laps 12 and 27, then a final stint on soft from lap 42. The fastest two-stopper would be start on supersoft, medium on lap 12, then soft from lap 37. However, this carries a significant pace disadvantage.