Kevin Magnussen’s lap 34 crash in Mexico broke up a Max Verstappen two-stop vs Charles Leclerc one-stop contest. With the race red-flagged everyone got to change their tyres for free and had no need of further pit stops. In this re-booted contest Verstappen simply drove off into the distance for his 16th win of the season, leaving behind a sometimes-enthralling dice between Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton for runner-up.
The background to that particular battle was the difficult choice over which tyres to fit for the remaining 36-lap distance. This was no simple calculation and it was a decision being agonised over by pretty much every team.
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Thirty-six laps was a fairly challenging distance for the calculated wear limit for the medium tyre, but comfortably within the range of the hard. On the other hand, the greater traction of medium tyre was reckoned to be worth five metres off the grid – and its quicker warm-up would see it significantly faster for at least the first five laps.
The pattern is always different car-to-car and some teams had the hard down as the faster tyre over a stint, more than making up in its slower degradation what it lost in the first few laps to its slower warm-up. Others had the medium as faster – but only if you could control the wear.