The first day of on-track action of the Formula 1 70th Anniversary Grand Prix is ​​now over and the drivers have already tested their cars for a second week in a row. As usual, both free practice sessions were dominated from start to finish by the Mercedes, in the morning session, Valtteri Bottas took first place with his teammate and six-time world champion, Lewis Hamilton, just behind him so that in the afternoon session, both drivers would swap positions. Recall that during last week's British Grand Prix, both Mercedes were dominating the race until a puncture in each car to the left front tire caused Valtteri Bottas to fall to eleventh position, while Lewis Hamilton was able to win the Grand Prize just for seconds. The Mercedes were not the only ones affected by the tires, in the first half of the race, Daniil Kvyat suffered a huge accident after his right rear tire blew out and Carlos Sainz was in fourth position when a puncture appeared in his McLaren, knocking him out of the point zone. The Spanish driver has commented that the race strategy will be a headache for the teams.

Pirelli announced that the tires to be used during the Formula 1 70th anniversary Grand Prix will be one step softer than last weekend's tires. During today's two free practice sessions, the drivers and teams were testing these new tires and we could observe that the degradation of these is massive compared to last week. During a race simulation, Charles Leclerc had run for 16 laps and his tires were completely worn. This soft tire compound is not the preferred one by teams or drivers however Pirelli has provided teams with a total of 8 sets of soft tires and only 3 sets of medium and 2 hard. This results in teams having to strain to do race strategies so a stop is most likely not possible.

“I think it’s going to be a bit of a headache for everyone. Especially in Q2, deciding what you are going to do. It’s not so much whether you can go through to Q2 on the soft or the medium, it’s what you prefer to start the race in, independent of whether you go through or not. It’s going to be a bit of challenge, a lot of thinking tonight and tomorrow.” Affirmed Carlos Sainz.

“I like it, having a different tyre choice to last week, because it challenges the engineers, the drivers, the set-up, the mechanics, everyone, so let’s embrace it and take the right choices from now on.” Commented the Spaniard.

"Tyre choice will play a big part for the rest of the weekend."

Hear from the team as they share thoughts on Free Practice Friday at the #F170 Grand Prix. 👇🇬🇧

— McLaren (@McLarenF1) August 7, 2020

“There is a lot of blistering and a lot of graining with all the four tyres, and we’re just out there surviving. We know that it’s a weakness of our car to handle these softest ranges, so we want to make sure we had enough track time today, and also because later in the weekend we’re probably going to need harder compounds.”

Alex Albon also commented that there are a lot of issues while running with the softest tyre and he thinks that compound is not the fastest during this weekend.

“I think it’s not a great choice by Pirelli. The tyre isn’t quick, it’s too soft for this circuit. I think it was quicker today on the mediums than on the softs. The thing is we don’t have enough mediums and hards for the weekend, so we’re a little bit stuck with strategy. Tomorrow will be quite important, choosing the right tyre at the right moment for Q1, Q2 and Q3.” Affirmed the British-Thai Red Bull driver.

Lewis Hamilton was another driver that shared his thoughts on the tyre situation.

“They’ve pretty much been exactly the same tyre to be honest. The softest of the tyres, the red tyre feels a little bit overheating at the end of the lap, and the other medium feels pretty much the same all the way until the last couple of corners, and is a little bit better on the rear.” Said the six-time world champion. Let’s see how the teams manage the race strategy and how the drivers manage their tyres while racing another car.