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First, they have a very defined temperature range in which they properly activate and provide the most traction. But they're also affected by how much rubber was on the track, the relative abrasiveness of the surface, the circuit characteristics, the driver characteristics, how fast the tire degrades, and lord knows what else. A tire that's great in Friday practice may suddenly suck on Sunday, and vice versa. And sometimes a tire that's great for the first 30 laps isn't so good for the last 30.
In general, Pirelli aims to have about a half-second difference between each of the three compounds they provide at a given track, meaning that if the hards do 1:30.0, for example, the mediums should do 1:29.5, and the softs 1:29.0. But it doesn't always work that way, and it's difficult to predict the best strategy. Which is part of the game.
In the case of Miami, the pole sitter starting on the softer compound (the softs would have forced a two-stop strategy or a horribly long hard stint) made perfect sense, and usually the first few qualifiers want to start on the softer because you don't want to lose track position right off the bat to some guy in 5th or wherever who's got grippier tires than you. So if I'm Checo, I absolutely want the mediums—not really even a question, if Alonso is right next to me on mediums.
The problem was, Checo wasn't getting a half-second a lap on Max. And neither, for comparison, was Alonso. When Checo pitted on lap 21 or around then, he needed to be about ten seconds up on Max, then lose 20-ish on the pit stop, then come out 10 behind him. But he came out something like 15 behind him...
Now, part of that is that Max is absurdly fast, and is usually a couple tenths faster than Checo anyway, depending on the track etc. He also probably picked up some time with DRS, which Checo didn't have since nobody was in front of him. And it's possible that Checo wasn't on top of his game that day. But really, I think it was mostly that the performance gap between the mediums and hards wasn't very big—at the start of the race, with no rubber laid down after the rain and a Miami-hot, jet black new asphalt surface. It's possible, for example, that the mediums were running too hot and with too much slipping, because the track hadn't rubbered in yet. Sliding tires overheat quickly. On the other side, it's likely that the hards were right in their peak window. So the medium guys are getting like 85% out of their tires while the hards are at 100%.
But after 40 laps or so, the track's rubbered in and in prime condition, and the mediums come to life. And so Max is hellaciously fast when he switches to them.
Like I said, starting on the mediums was the only call for the pole sitter—BEFORE the race, on Saturday, when you have to make that call. And so, like I said, Checo, who is one of the absolute smartest guys out there, knew what was going to happen way early in the race, once he realized that he wasn't getting the gap he needed. Hence he didn't really fight him when Max went for the pass, and he wasn't pissed afterward, because whaddya gonna do? The race was over by lap 10. Shit happens.
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