Formula 1’s official race tyre supplier Pirelli has announced their compound selection for the upcoming F1 season, with selections broadly in line with last year’s approach.
Written By Hafiz Akbar, Edited By Umut Yelbaşı
While in the past Pirelli had decided on their compound choices a mere few weeks before the races themselves, they have opted to announce the compound choices for the whole 2021 campaign as a whole because of the ongoing complications caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Commenting on this, Pirelli’s Head of F1 and Car Racing, Mario Isola, said, “Announcing all the selections for the year right now help the teams and the drivers with their planning, also allowing for maximum flexibility just in case the calendar has to change due to the restrictions, as we saw last year.”
While we usually see Pirelli bring the usual three compounds of tyres, the hardness of each compound selection varies between different circuits.
For the upcoming season, compounds are pretty much aligned with what’s been used last season, although softer compound tyres will be brought to Baku and Interlagos.
Isola added, “The selections themselves are, on the whole, similar to last year, which means that teams should have plenty of data to fall back on – but we have two races where the nominations are softer.
“The first is Azerbaijan, where our C2 hards [weren’t] used last time, so we are going with the softest set, which is C3, C4, and C5.
“Then we have Interlagos, where we’ll take the C2, C3 and C4 this year because the C1 that was selected last time didn’t show a particularly big advantage in terms of wear over the mediums.
“In both cases,the softer nominations could lead to a greater variety of race strategies.”
With the race organizers continuing to follow COVID protocols across the paddock, the next campaign is set to see drivers given the same tyre allocation as last season, with 2 hards, 3 mediums and 8 softs per weekend.
While the overall selections have been finalised, there is a scope within the regulations that allows the current selection to be changed under exceptional circumstances within 15 days before the event takes place.