The wide world of strategy options expected in F1's Bahrain GP in Malaysia

It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that Formula 1's strategic options have been slightly limited this season, with only occasional breaks from one-stop encounters throughout 2026 thus far. In recent rounds, those expectations of one-stop strategies were delivered upon - to the point that teams might not have stopped at all in Madrid or Azerbaijan had the situation allowed. 

F1's return to Malaysia as a proxy host for the Bahrain Grand Prix has reintroduced degradation, to the point that we're genuinely looking at a heady cocktail of strategy options for Sunday's race. The roughness of the track surface, combined with the load in the high-speed corners, has put the tyres under a lot of mechanical and thermal strain throughout the course of a lap; the slipping, shifting and sliding of Pirelli's mid-range trio of compounds will take the race beyond the realms of a one-stopper.

This should be good for Sunday's spectacle. Once more, the fallacy that 'having tyres that allow drivers to drive flat-out all race would be a good thing' was disproven; this simply creates processions, and only Alex Albon's shunt on lap 30 saved Baku from being a 51-lap parade around the Azerbaijani capital. We now have some variance, and the potential for a scenario that will keep the strategists engaged.

When Pirelli picked the C2, C3, and C4 for Malaysia, it did so knowing that the circuit characteristics would produce at least a two-stop affair. It also believes that a two-stop is the quickest option; some variation of a medium-hard-hard would be quicker than a soft-hard-hard, although only by the order of two seconds of race time. But this option is not available to everyone.

Indeed, Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc have already used a set of hards; Verstappen gave one set back after FP2 without it even being used, while Leclerc used his in FP3. This means that both will either have to extend their stints on the soft and the medium to make a two-stop work - or, alternatively, go for a three-stopper and use two sets of soft or medium tyres during the race. 

The three-stop is also barely slower than the two, by just five seconds; the time loss from the pitlane will have to be considered here, and that final stop might end up being a decision borne out of circumstance depending on the traffic ahead. In short, there's lots of potential strategies and genuinely very little between them.

Leclerc has been the only driver so far to actually run with the hard tyre

Photo by: Ashwith S Pai

"We think all three compounds will be used tomorrow because of this uncertainty with the pace management and the risk of over-heating, pace degradation," explained Pirelli's head of motorsport Dario Marrafuschi. 

"Probably part of the grid will be medium-double-hard, part of the grid will use all the three compounds with the two stoppers, and part of the grid will go to a three-stop using, I think, all the three compounds."

Marrafuschi also reckoned that some might choose to avoid the hard tyre altogether. Although the C2 should last, and eventually see an overlap with the medium in terms of pace (Pirelli estimates this to be around eight to 10 laps where the C2 would begin to outperform the C3), the low-grip situation on-track could count against it.

As Lando Norris explained, "the hard obviously lasts better but doesn't provide as much grip. Sometimes you slide more on the hard, sometimes therefore the soft that provides more grip, you can drive slower but have more grip and go quicker". It's all a fine balancing act and, if a car is lacking grip, it might just be easiest to circumvent the hard altogether.

"One point that makes us think that there could be someone on a two-stop with just medium and soft, is that if you run a kind of a gentle run-in on the soft tyre, then you can make it much more consistent than a first push lap and then you get high degradation. So this is something that could be considered kind of a scrubbed tyre," Marrafuschi added. 

"They could scrub the tyres, for example, in the out-lap, in the formation lap tomorrow, and this makes us think that someone could go for longer stints also with the soft. Actually, soft and medium, in terms of degradation, are not much different from each other. The soft, which is the C4, is performing really well and this is due, in this case in a positive sense, to the tarmac roughness.

Managing the soft early will be key to any attempts to use it in a two-stopper

Photo by: Srinivasa Krishnan

"Of course, the pace [on the C2] is definitely slower. We expect it to be 0.8 slower than the medium. Anyhow, in our calculations, with these performances, slower in the first lap, and its degradation, medium double hard is the fastest option, actually.

"The pitstop window would open at lap 12, and the second window would open at lap 32. It means you can get at least 20 performance laps on the hard choice, which is good enough."

And that's not even considering the impact of weather. Rain has, so far, steered clear of the Sepang circuit (at least, during F1 hours) - although a short downpour might necessitate a scramble for the wet compounds of tyre, the circuit tends to dry up quickly. This would still require teams to manage their degradation, as the crossover between intermediates and slicks would be vital given the fragility of the green-walled tyre.

Either way, the tyre degradation should yield a fascinating battle of wits on the pitwall - winning in Malaysia won't be possible without a game-winning strategy.