Tyre gamble in Q3 unlikely

With this weekend's grand prix in Istanbul likely to witness high levels of tyre degradation, there have been some suggestions that drivers may choose to elect to not run in parts of qualifying so they can save their rubber for the race.

In China, Mark Webber was able to come through from 18th on the grid to finish third after his early qualifying exit meant he had lots of fresh tyres for the race.

McLaren principal race engineer Phil Prew said during a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in on Tuesday that the competitiveness of the battle at the front meant starting as far forward as possible was still the best tactic.

"The tyre degradation is going to be large factor in Turkey, and I think that will certainly be pending towards a three-stop race," explained Prew.

"There are some benefits of having new tyres available to you. However, I think the competitiveness of the field will force you pretty much to run your ultimate new tyres through qualifying.

"Our position would always be to take qualifying position over the new tyres in the race. I am not discounting what we did with Lewis in China, for example, [when they sacrificed one run in Q3] but we were fortunate to get through Q1 and Q2 with a single set of option tyres, which allowed us to save one set of options. But I don't think not competing in Q3 for tyre saving is the right thing to do."

Prew says that McLaren has been working as hard in recent weeks on tyre strategy as it has on delivering improvements to its car.

"There have been continual improvements in pretty much all areas, from the lessons learned through winter testing and the early races, as well as continued work to improve our tyre utilisation."

He added: "We are obviously hoping to close the gap [in Turkey]. We don't have the fastest car at the moment, and Red Bull Racing are still the team that we are aiming to close the gap to. We are adding upgrades to the car in Turkey which will hopefully help us close that gap.

"But as we have seen over the first three races, the difference between cars varies from track to track. Turkey should be a reasonably strong track for us, and developments deliver performance if we utilise performance.

"We are also conscious everyone else is aiming to improve the car at the same time. As always we hope we have done enough and more than other people."