SAKHIR, Bahrain -- Strategy at the Bahrain Grand Prix is likely to be dictated by rear tyre degradation. Make the super-softs last and drivers are looking at a standard one-stop. Treat the rear tyres badly and they'll be heading for a two-stop. Once again, the gap in performance between the soft tyre and the medium makes the medium tyre useless in the race this weekend, so all strategy permutations are based around a combination of super-soft and soft.
The only race representative practice session was FP2 on Friday evening and in that session the longest anyone took the super-soft was 24 laps on the Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas. Mercedes appeared to suffer more degradation than the Ferrari but that may be because the world champions were running more fuel. Red Bull appeared to be the lightest on its tyres and much closer to the top two teams on race pace than it was in qualifying pace.
That too might be down to fuel loads, but it could also be explained by the qualifying engine mode run on the Mercedes and Ferrari that the Renault in the back of the Red Bull simply cannot match. In the race, Mercedes and Ferrari will have to run a more conservative mode thought to be closer to the Renault's performance.
On his long-run on the super-softs Bottas experienced just 2.2s of performance degradation over 16 laps, suggesting the loss in performance is unlikely to be enough to prompt a two-stop strategy on lap 19. However, pitting early for softs to get 'the undercut' could be a valuable weapon for anyone stuck behind a car they are unable to overtake.