Pirelli’s New Tyres for the F1 season
Italian based Pirelli, the official Formula 1 car tyres supplier, have created a new collection of tyres for the up and coming racing season. They have altered the dynamics of the four dry weather tyres, making them softer and reducing the differences between each of them.
It was only last year that Pirelli took over as the supplier which saw the introduction of faster-wearing tyres, resulting in tighter races. Having been praised all over the world for enhancing the excitement of 2011’s season they are now on a mission to improve overtaking.
The dry tyres are identified in the same way as they were last year. Red for super-soft, yellow for soft, white for medium and silver for hard. However Pirelli have opted to make these colours more striking on the car tyres so those watching from home on their television sets can identify them more clearly.
The wet- weather tyres have been altered, with the colour markings being green for intermediates, which will be selected for damper weather conditions and blue for wet tyres.
Pirelli’s thinking behind the new tyres is to make strategic choices less obvious. Last year they felt they had been too cautious with teams deciding to go for the softer of the two tyre compounds available during most of the grand prix races. They tended to save tyre fitting for the slower and harder one until the last part of the race so they could do the least amount of laps as possible on them. If the weather is dry then the F1 drivers have to use both types of the compounds during the race.