The variability in the racing brought about by the new rules allowing drivers to choose from three tyre compounds in a race instead of two, has been one of the brighter elemnts of this 2016 season so far.

And it looks set to continue as it was announced that Felipe Massa and Romain Grosjean have made the most aggressive tyre choices for the upcoming Chinese Grand Prix.

For this third race in succession, Pirelli will bring its medium, soft and supersoft tyres, and each driver will have 13 sets of tyres available to use across the weekend in Shanghai.

Unlike many F1 venues, where protecting the rear tyres is key to success, Shanghai is all about getting the front tyres at the optimum temperature, especially for qualifying. A significant percentage of the lap time in Shanghai is spent turning, which damages the front tyres as they slide. Track and air temperatures are often cool at this event.

Each team and driver is also free to pick from those three compounds during the race, compared to two last year, in a new-for-2016 rule that is already proving popular.

Both Grosjean and Massa have opted to take seven sets of supersofts; five softs and just a single set of medium compound tyres for the third race of the 2016 F1 season. These decisions were made several weeks ago and are not in any way connected to events of the opening races of 2016.

Grosjean, who has scored points in his first two races for Haas F1, used an attacking race strategy that featured three stints on the supersoft tyres and a final stint on the soft tyres to finish fifth in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

By contrast, Massa’s Williams team did not have enough new softer tyres available for theBahrain race and lost a number of positions by running the medium tyre.

Mercedes vs Ferrari

At the front of the grid, Mercedes and Ferrari have again gone for a slightly different approach.

Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen will both have six sets of supersofts, four softs and three mediums to run in China. Both Mercedes drivers will only have five sets of supersofts, but Lewis Hamilton will have an extra set of mediums, while Nico Rosberg has gone for one more set of softs.

In last year’s race in China, Mercedes used its pace advantage on the medium tyre to run 1-2 to the finish, but the new tyre rule opens up a chance for Ferrari to try something different this time around.

Pirelli “very close” to signing new F1 supply contract

Pirelli is expected to sign its new contract to supply F1 with tyres, which was first announced by Bernie Ecclestone in October 2015, later this week.

Until now, the Italian company has not officially signed the deal with the FIA, pending satisfactionary measures by the sport to be able to test the new 2017 tyres on a respresentative car. But its motorsport boss, Paul Hembery, told Autosport that he expected everything to be sorted out later this week.

He said: “This week I believe everything will need to be resolved. We’re out of time now, but we’re very close. We’ve had a lot of collaboration in trying to do this.

“It’s a difficult world to work in, and within those constraints of the Formula 1 system, I believe we are drawing to a close to get something that will work for everybody.

“Everybody has worked extremely hard, and as ever we’ve worked very well with Charlie [Whiting] and his team.”

Whiting, who is F1’s race director, described the situation as “not unusual” and explained that Pirelli had asked for clarification on what would be expected of its tyres in the much-debated 2017 F1 regulations, as well as a guarantee on testing, before signing the new contract.

He said: “It’s not unusual for a contract to be delayed like this, and we’re still some way before 2017.

“Pirelli wanted the targets they were asked to achieve to be put into the contract. They wanted more specific items in the contract regarding testing. They want a guarantee of testing because if we are going to set them targets then they want the tools with which to achieve those targets.

“Everything else is sorted. They just want this guarantee of testing put into the regulations to have a little more comfort. They also want the possibility to test a previous spec of car, so it’s all achievable in the short term.”