F1 Spanish GP: Max Verstappen had softs left, but Red Bull opted for hards – the reasoning explained. Red Bull fitted Max Verstappen with hard tyres during the Spanish GP Safety Car period.

To try to challenge the McLarens in a race that looked like it would end in yet another papaya 1-2, Max Verstappen needed two things: a strong start to get ahead of at least one of the MCL39s and prevent them from escaping right from the opening laps, and an aggressive strategy.

As seen elsewhere, one of Woking’s key strengths is tyre degradation management. Aware that it would be hard to beat the MCL39s with the same strategy, Red Bull decided to try something different—an approach that hadn’t even been among the pre-race options: a three-stop strategy.

Credit to Red Bull for trying something bold and leaving nothing untried, even when they brought the Dutchman in for his third stop before Lando Norris, in a last-ditch attempt to keep hopes of second place alive.

The hard tyre gamble: hoping for more grip
Everything changed a little over ten laps from the end, when Andrea Kimi Antonelli retired due to an oil pressure loss in his power unit, prompting the race directors to deploy the Safety Car and bunch up the field. At that point, with no new soft tyre sets left, Red Bull surprised everyone by fitting new hards.

It was an unusual decision that left many puzzled: the hardest compound had shown poor performance since Friday, so much so that no one had used it until that point in the race. Additionally, with fewer than ten laps remaining, getting it into the optimal operating window at the restart would be difficult.

Since the first practice sessions, the hard compound had shown very little grip, constantly sliding, which in turn triggered overheating and further loss of grip. Moreover, in Barcelona, the hard compound corresponded to the hardest in the entire range—C1—and warming it up under Safety Car conditions, without the help of the fast corners, was going to be tricky.

The remaining softs weren’t just used in qualifying
So why did Red Bull go with the hards, despite having another set of softs? In fact, before the race Max Verstappen still had three new sets of tyres available (one soft, one medium, and one hard), along with three used soft sets. Based on what had been used by that stage of the race, the four-time world champion had already used the medium set and three softs, including the new one.

So, Max Verstappen technically still had a usable set of softs available—but the idea of using it was almost immediately dismissed. There was a reason: that soft set had been used not only in qualifying but also during the laps before lining up on the grid, when the pit lane opens 40 minutes before the formation lap.

In those ten minutes when the pit lane is open, drivers typically complete several laps to do practice starts, collect data, and assess track conditions for last-minute setup changes. While the cars remain in parc fermé, teams can still adjust the front wing and balance based on feedback from those laps.

To complete those laps, teams must use one of the sets still available post-qualifying; for Max Verstappen, one of the three used soft sets was employed. Before lining up, Max completed four laps, including all practice starts, on top of the effort made in qualifying.

In short, that soft set had already done at least seven laps—not far from the mileage on the red-striped tyres Verstappen had already been using. Though pit lane segments reduced the load on the tyres somewhat, Red Bull didn’t feel confident in fitting that used soft set and instead opted for new hards, hoping they might offer better peak grip despite the warm-up issues.

“The Safety Car came out at the worst possible time from a strategy point of view: do you stay out on softs that are already used and at least eight laps old, risking being overtaken at the restart?” Christian Horner explained after the race.

“Unfortunately, the hard was the only new set left, since we’d chosen a three-stop strategy. We thought at the time that new hards were better than a used and heavily degraded soft. So, we made that call.”

In hindsight—particularly given how difficult it was to bring the hard tyre up to temperature at the restart—Christian Horner admitted that maybe they should have left Verstappen out on the used softs: “Looking back, we would’ve left him out. He would have been passed by the two McLarens. Would Charles Leclerc have passed him too? It’s impossible to know. You make a decision based on the data you have. The risk of a three-stop strategy is that, if there’s a Safety Car in the last quarter of the race, you’re exposed.”