Before the race on the Ile Notre Dame in Montreal to face the teams on two main questions: Is it early in the race to a safety car period? Which tires should start the race? Sam Michael, Technical Director of the Williams team, explains his thoughts, which he makes in this regard before the clock start at 18 GMT.

“We have not yet decided whether we will start on the hard or soft compound,” said Michael. “There are two different approaches. If one assumes that there will be in the early stages of the race a Safety Car period, take the soft tires, to have used them and they runterzubekommen again.”
“If one does not believe that it is not the safety car comes out, you might want to be on the hard compound to be able to drive around for two long stints,” said Michael further. The Grand Prix of Canada would be one way or another for at least a two-stop race, because you could not possibly survive due to high tire wear, with only one tire change the distance of 70 laps.

Williams is with Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg the two best-placed driver who may choose their tires before the race, free. Michael would therefore not exclude that we could possibly send its pilots with different strategies in the race to be prepared for all eventualities.
But a look into the past leaving Michael to assume that safety car driver Bernd will turn out Mayländer with high probability during the race. “The likelihood of a safety car deployment is very high. It was always like that. We had been in 19 races Safety Car periods, sometimes up to four per race.”

There are many indications that this in this year’s race will hardly be otherwise. “Now we have six more cars on the grid and to two types of tires that will be hard to drive due to the strong graining – all of which increases the probability of safety car interventions,” said Michael concludes.