As a safety measure, drivers will be penalized if they do more than 18 laps on one set of tires in today's Grand Prix.
Formula 1 teams have been asked to do no more than 18 laps on a set of tires during Sunday's 57-lap Qatar Grand Prix. The rule was implemented as a safety feature, meant to get ahead of data from Pirelli suggesting that tires may be at risk of catastrophic failure after that point.
The issue is a microscopic earing found on tires during Friday's practice sessions, the first signs of a possible separation between the carcass of the tire and the wear compound that interacts with the road. That problem comes from repeated contact with the outside edges of kerbs at the edges of the track limits, where drivers regularly go off track during a lap. Those limits have been changed in two corners to reduce the chance of the problem, but further signs of damage seen in yesterday's 19-lap, safety car-slowed sprint race led Pirelli to implement the restriction anyway.This, in theory, will force F1 teams to get off tires at risk of blowing out before that damage becomes too big. In practice, that means every team in the field should have to run a three-stop race over the course of the event and will have to choose their tire strategy accordingly. With the mandate on stint length capping the potential of a stop-saving run on the hard compound and softest compound holding up poorly during a relatively light load of laps under green in the sprint race, the medium tire compound should be in high demand throughout the grand prix itself.
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