US GP practice quotes: Pirelli
Paul Hembery: "We saw a wide variety of weather conditions today, but we're expecting temperatures to climb over the rest of the weekend, which of course makes it more difficult for the teams when it comes to predicting tyre behaviour and therefore strategy. In addition, we saw the track evolving throughout both sessions, with the times getting progressively faster. Generally, there seems to be more grip than last year, when the asphalt was brand new. From what we can see so far, we could well be looking at a one-stop race for most runners, as was the case last year, although some may try two stops if they feel it offers a speed advantage
"Wear and degradation is where we would expect it to be: the medium tyre will be the one to qualify on, while we're seeing very little degradation on the hard tyre - which is just under a second slower than the medium tyre at the moment. That's a big enough gap for strategy to make a difference, particularly for the drivers who start outside the top 10 and are not obliged to begin the race with the tyres they qualified on. There's plenty of data to analyse tonight, before the teams concentrate on qualifying simulations during FP3 tomorrow, which is likely to be held in conditions that are more representative of the race."
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