Updated F1 Starting Grid 2020 Turkish Grand Prix

F1 Race Event: Turkish F1 GP
Race Track: Istanbul Park Circuit

Pole Sitter Lance Stroll, Racing Point celebrates in Parc Ferme

Start time: 11:10 CET | 10:10 UK | 02:10 LA | 19:10 Tokio

Racing Point almost had a front row lockout. Canadian driver Lance Stroll will start from P1 for the first time in Turkey. The other Racing Point driver Sergio Perez also scored his best qualifying result and will start on P3 for the first time.

Max Verstappen who starts from P2 in the Red Bull will have a big chance to win his 10th race. The Dutch driver was quickest every session until Q3 in qualifying and was very disappointed to not score pole in Turkey. He probably will pass Stroll in turn 1 and drive away towards the victory.

This start grid has been updated after a lot of drivers were under investigation by the stewards, because they drove their quickest lap time in Q3 under yellow flag conditions. The outcome was that Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz received a grid penalty, which has been applied in the start grid below.

It's the first time this season that a Mercedes team driver isn't starting from.

F1 Starting Grid 2020 Turkish GP

Penalties:

• George Russell, Williams car no. 63, has to start from the back for using more than 3 engines this season.
• Carlos Sainz, McLaren car no. 55, 3 place grid penalty for impeding another driver.
• Lando Norris, McLaren car no. 4, 5 place grid penalty for not respecting yellow flags.

2020 Turkish F1 GP Race Strategy

This is one of the hardest races to predict a strategy for, owing to a number of different factors. First and foremost, track conditions. This asphalt is extremely new and slippery, with rapid evolution, but how much grip it will ultimately offer remains unknown. The weather makes those calculations considerably harder, with very cool track temperatures and rain today, while tomorrow’s conditions are still uncertain. Finally, there’s not much difference between a two-stopper and one-stopper.

On paper, a two-stopper is quicker – but teams always prefer a one-stopper, especially if they can somehow manage to do it on the two softer compounds this weekend. Right now, that seems almost impossible if graining on the soft stays the same as it’s been so far, but some teams might still try it. Alternatively, they might still go for a one-stopper using the White hard compound, if they can get it to work. All that obviously depends on what tomorrow’s race conditions will look like, so there are plenty of question marks.

In theory, a two-stopper is quickest: with two stints of 16 laps on the Red soft plus a Yellow medium stint of 26 laps (perhaps as the middle stint). Another way of doing it, if there’s graining on the soft, is just one 14-lap stint on the red tyre with two 22-lap stints on the medium.
If it’s warm enough to switch on the hard compound, the teams could try a one-stopper with 30 laps on medium and 28 laps on hard. Alternatively, 20 laps on soft and 38 laps on hard.

2020 Turkish F1 GP Race Notes

• Wet weather characterised today’s action at Istanbul Park, both in free practice and qualifying, causing a 45-minute delay with just over six minutes of Q1 remaining, followed by another red flag three minutes later. A mix of intermediate and full wet tyres were used throughout all three qualifying sessions, with pole set using the intermediate tyre on the final run of Q3.
• This made an already slippery track even more challenging, allied to the cool track temperatures of just 12 degrees centigrade.
• Red Bull’s Max Verstappen went quickest in every session so far this weekend (in both wet and dry conditions) apart from the crucial Q3 session, when Racing Point’s Lance Stroll dramatically took pole ahead of him.
• As per the rules, the car set-up cannot now be changed even though tomorrow’s race conditions could be quite different.

✅ Check out more posts with related topics: