Despite a general consensus among drivers that Pirelli's compound choices are too hard for the Circuit de Catalunya, teams are faced with a choice between a two-stop and a three-stop strategy on Sunday afternoon. The reason for the multi-stop approach is the huge gap in performance between the soft compound tyres and the medium compound (not to mention the even bigger step to the hards).
During Friday practice a new set of medium tyres were 2.7s per lap slower than the softs, although Pirelli believes its data was skewed by a number of messy laps not helped by high winds.