Qualifying tells you which car is fastest over a single lap with fresh tyres, a clear track and no fuel constraint. A race almost never asks that question. It asks which car can cover the distance in the least total time, including the compromise of driving on rubber that is past its best, the cost of stopping to replace it, and the penalty of being stuck behind someone who made a different choice. Those are strategy questions, and they routinely outrank pace.
What makes tyre strategy interesting rather than merely arithmetic is that the same decision can be correct at one circuit and clearly wrong at another, using identical cars and identical compounds. The variables that flip the answer are physical, and they are worth understanding separately before looking at how they combine.
