17/04/2018
NEWS STORY
The fourth race of the season sees the teams differing widely in terms of the sets of tyres they are taking.
While Ferrari and Sauber are taking the full complement of ten sets, as is Stoffel Vandoorne, the Renault duo are taking just seven, while Red Bull, Williams and Toro Rosso take 8.
Stroll, Hulkenberg and Sainz take four sets of the supersoft while Raikkonen and Ericsson take one set apiece, with almost all drivers opting for either one or two sets of the hardest compound available, the soft.
The combination of ultrasoft, supersoft and soft was used in Melbourne for the season opener, and is a step softer than 2017.
Last year's race was won by Daniel Ricciardo, the Australian starting on supersofts, before switching to softs and then two further stints on supersofts in a race that was every bit as dramatic as last Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix and featured a number of great passes along with the infamous incident involving Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, not forgetting the beginnings of the Pink Panthers feud.
While second-placed Valtteri Bottas - who passed Lance Stroll on the final lap - sixth-placed Esteban Ocon and tenth-placed Pascal Wehrlein were also on three-stop strategies, the remainder of the top ten were on two-stoppers.