SEPANG, Malaysia -- Strategy at Sepang is always dependent on the weather, but even if it stays dry the teams will base their decisions on the clouds above. This weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix has been a relatively cool one due to cloud cover on Friday and a qualifying start time of 17:00. However, the race is due to take place in the intense heat of the afternoon at 15:00 and if the sun is out track temperatures are likely to rocket above 50C. In such circumstances, the super-soft tyre -- a low working range tyre -- is likely to overheat and suffer thermal degradation to the point that a two-stop strategy could become a viable option. The soft tyre -- a high-working range compound -- is expected to hold up for longer, but has a 0.8s performance deficit to the super-soft when both are new.
The red flag for Romain Grosjean's accident in second practice means the team's data gathering over Friday long runs was cut short. But from the small sample of laps we can piece together, Ferrari appears to hold the edge on race pace with Red Bull second. Mercedes will be hoping for cloud cover after it suffered more than most with thermal degradation on the super-soft tyres, but it remains to be seen whether the changes made to Lewis Hamilton's on Friday night offer the same benefits over multiple laps as they did over one. Valtteri Bottas, however, is not confident if conditions are hot.
"I think we are facing a difficult day tomorrow, I think that's a fact. What we've seen so far this weekend suggests that Ferrari's and Red Bull's race pace is stronger than ours, especially if it's going to be hot, if there are no clouds covering the sun, it's going to be trickier for us. I expect a very difficult day, but like we saw in Singapore, we were struggling but the cooler and mixed conditions helped us a lot and the race pace was really good. Perhaps a shower would help us but we can't count on that."
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Starting from the back of the grid, Sebastian Vettel has a full selection of fresh tyres available and is hoping that gives him strategy options to use his Ferrari -- quickest car on the grid -- to move through the field.
"We have the whole race tomorrow to get back and we have to look at the positives that we have more tyres than everyone and we can maybe play with the strategy if it's a day where it could pay off to play with strategy," Vettel said. "Then for sure if the Safety Car comes out at a time that suits you, you might come back and you never know what's possible. We'll see. In terms of speed we should get back to the leading group and we'll have to see how far up [we can be]."
If it rains all bets are off, but wet conditions during first practice suggested Red Bulls would have the egde.