The change means that teams won’t pursue clever tyre usage strategies that could see them running intermediate tyres in a dry session.
As the rules were originally written, drivers were obliged to use new medium tyres in Saturday’s SQ1 and SQ2 sessions, and then new softs on SQ3.
Teams realised that they didn’t have to save a set of new softs for SQ3 if they felt that those tyres would be more useful earlier in the weekend, either in FP1 or Friday’s qualifying session for the grand prix.
Indeed, in Baku, Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris used all their soft tyres before the sprint qualifying session.
In that event Tsunoda didn’t make SQ3, but Norris did. McLaren had left the option open for him to run on intermediates – which the rules allowed – should two driver …