I would say Kris was saving tyres. I think this is about article 13-2-5 of the sporting regs, where you get 4 extra 'other compound' tyres if you use that compound for shakedown.

In this case, it's the hards - since they're expecting a dry rally, it makes sense to have as many good hard tyres as possible available. By doing your first run of shakedown on hards, you are allowed 4 more for the rally.

I guess what Kris is referring to by 'stupid rules' is the fact that you are allowed more first-choice tyres (in Rally2 the maximum you can use in total is 26 here in Portugal, so 12x can be hard, 14x must be soft) which wouldn't really be anyone's first choice...