Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen won the Australian Grand Prix using a two-stop strategy, having started the race on the P Zero Red supersoft tire and then completing two stints on the P Zero White medium tire. His tire strategy gave him a decisive advantage over all his rivals, with the remainder of the top six all adopting a three-stop strategy.

Only four drivers started on the medium tire: Adrian Sutil (Force India), Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso), Sergio Perez (McLaren) and Pastor Maldonado (Williams).

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery said: “We took the deliberately bold decision to come here with the supersoft tire in order to spice up theaction. We believe that this worked very well, with a variety of different two and three stop strategies just as we expected and seven different leaders. Kimi Raikkonen and Lotus understood the tires perfectly, making a two-stop strategy work when many of their rivals couldn’t. It was a true masterclass in tire management.

Although they were often in different places on the track, Raikkonen and Lotus were effectively racing Ferrari and Alonso throughout the second half of the race, who were on a three-stop ‘sprint’ strategy. Seeing how those different approaches played out at the end was the intriguing part of the strategy, which led to a spectacular finish and three very deserving world champions on the podium. It’s also worth pointing out that Raikkonen drove the fastest lap of the race on lap 56: the penultimate lap, on medium tires that were 22 laps old. We are very happy with the performance and durability of both compounds, particularly as both track and ambient temperatures were very low, causing a bit of graining. The conditions next weekend in Malaysia will be very different however!”

FASTEST TIMES OF THE DAY BY COMPOUND:

               Supersoft                Medium               Intermediate    Wet
    
First         BIA – 1:30.454        RAI – 1:29.274      N/A                N/A

Second    SUT – 1:30.710        VER – 1:29.498    N/A                N/A
    
Third        RIC – 1:30.881         ALO – 1:29.560    N/A                N/A

LONGEST STINT OF THE RACE:

Supersoft        14 (Rosberg)

Medium            30 (Gutierrez)

Intermediate    N/A

Wet                N/A

TRUTH-O-METER:
The winning two-stop strategy that we predicted turned out to be correct. We predicted the first stop to change from supersoft to medium on lap 14, with a second stop for medium tires on lap 36. Raikkonen followed exactly this tactic, making his first stop on lap 9 and his secondstop on lap 34.