ESPN looks at the potential strategy options for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Wet weather on race day morning means the teams' slick-tyre strategies are likely to go out of the window. After a scorching hot Friday the team's understanding of the tyres at Interlagos is skewed given the 17C air temperature on Sunday morning, but the forecast is likely to mean the intermediate and full wets become the tyres of choice.
On the off chance it does dry up ahead of the start of the race, the key to all strategies will be finding the balance between using the soft and medium tyres over a two-stop strategy (the hards are essentially redundant here, unless you are trying a one-stop).
Pirelli recommends that the following numbers of laps are not exceeded on each compound:
Hard = 38 laps
Medium = 35 laps
Soft = 18 laps
And on this basis, the possible pit-stop strategies predicted by Pirelli are as follows:
QUICKEST
Three-stopper: 3 stints on soft of 15 laps + 1 stint on medium of 26 laps
SECOND-QUICKEST
Two-stopper: 1 stint on soft of 15 laps + 2 stints on medium of 28 laps
SLOWEST
Two-stopper: 1 stint on soft of 15 laps + 1 stint on medium of 26 laps + 1 stint on hard of 30 laps
Also possible
One-stopper: 1 stint on medium of 33 laps+ 1 stint on hard of 38 laps It was telling that none of the teams used intermediate tyres during the damp start to final practice and instead opted for the unfavoured full wets. This was a strategy to save all four sets as inters for the race in the event that the conditions are mixed, while still having two sets of new full wets available. Should the track dry out, the drivers have the following slick tyres available.