Pirelli have released the driver tyre choices ahead of the 2016 Russian Grand Prix, and yet again the Mercedes AMG PETRONAS team has gone for a differing strategy to main rivals Scuderia Ferrari.
For the fourth race in a row the tyres allocated by Pirelli for this race weekend, are the white-walled medium, yellow-walled soft and red-walled super-soft compounds, with driver choices having already been made prior to the start of the season.
The main difference between the tyre choices of the two top teams is in their soft and super-soft selections. Mercedes have opted to bring four sets of the soft tyre and eight sets of the super-soft, whilst Ferrari have chosen to take six sets of soft and six sets of super-soft.
Tyre wear is notoriously low at the Sochi Autodrom, which is the probable reason for many of the teams leaning towards a super-soft heavy strategy, with one set of the harder medium tyre being the choice for all teams across the board.
The most extreme selections have come from the Red Bull Racing and Haas F1 team, who have chosen one set of the medium compound tyre, alongside two sets of soft and a massive ten sets of the super-soft option for each of their drivers. Williams have opted to take nine sets of the softest rubber available, whilst the Toro Rosso and Sahara Force India squads have gone with the same strategy as the Mercedes drivers.
McLaren, Sauber and the Renault Sport F1 team have all chosen to bring seven sets of the super-soft tyre, with five sets of the soft option, whilst the Manor Racing team has gone with the most conservative option of six sets of the super-soft compound and five sets of the soft rubber.
With Ferrari clearly a little bit lighter on the super-soft tyre front than their main opposition, could we see them play some interesting games during qualifying in order to try and save their tyres for the race?
