F1 Starting Grid 2020 Emilia Romagna GP

F1 Race Event: Emilia Romagna GP
Race Track: Imola Circuit

Starting grid at Imola

Start time: 13:10 CET | 12:10 UK | 06:10 LA | 20:10 Tokio

Valtteri Bottas will start from P1 from the start grid for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. With this pole Mercedes scored pole for all 14 races of this season until now. This time Bottas was able to get steel away a pole position from pole king Lewis Hamilton. It was the fourth pole of the season for the Finnish driver. His last pole position was at the Eifel Grand Prix where he ended up with a DNF.

The run towards first corner is quite long from the startgrid. Bottas, Hamilton and Max Verstappen will start from medium tyres. This could be big disadvantage for the start, because the soft runners will have a lot more grip at the start and can brake later for the first chicane.

Daniel Ricciardo could have a great start with the powerful Renault engine, soft tyres and starting on the clean side of the grid. The Australian driver accelerated at Mugello in 4.2s from 0 to 200 kph which is even quicker than the Mercedes cars.

F1 Starting Grid 2020 Emilia Romagna GP

2020 Emilia Romagna F1 GP Race Strategy

Calculating the tyre gap and optimal race strategies for the 63-lap Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix hasn't been easy, as the teams don't have previous experience of the track and there was only one (90-minute) free practice session this morning. This free practice session was also held from 10:00-11:30, which means that it won't be completely representative of the warmer afternoon conditions for the race.

Currently, there's a gap of around 0.5 seconds between the P Zero White hard and and P Zero Yellow medium, and 0.6 seconds between the medium and P Zero Red soft.

In terms of strategy, a one-stopper looks set to be fastest. The optimal one-stop strategy uses the medium and soft tyres: soft for 28 to 30 laps and medium for 33 to 35 laps (either way round). Very close to that is a soft to hard strategy: soft for 24 to 27 laps and hard for 36 to 39 laps (or vice versa).

Third-quickest is medium for 26 to 35 laps and hard for 28 to 37 laps. This strategy has the advantage of featuring a wider pit stop window.

A two-stop strategy is slower, but the best one is with two stints on soft of 18 laps, plus one stint on medium of 27 laps.

2020 Emilia Romagna F1 GP Race Notes

• Strategy. Both Mercedes cars as well as the Red Bull of Max Verstappen set their best Q2 times on the medium tyre, and will consequently start the race on this compound.
• Track temperatures. Qualifying began with 23 degrees ambient and nearly 30 degrees of track temperature. Similar conditions are expected for the race but none of the drivers have completed long runs in representative conditions.
• Pit stops. With a comparative lack of pre-race data from the single practice session, initial information suggests that the overall race time between a one-stop and two-stop strategy could be reasonably close. As a result, we’re likely to see both one-stoppers as well as two-stoppers tomorrow, as teams try to gain a tactical advantage from doing something different.
• Track evolution. With only one day of running prior to the race and only few support events, the track was very ‘green’ initially. There was plenty of evolution today and a similar trend is expected tomorrow.

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