Pirelli has officially released the three tyre compounds to be used from the 2019 Formula 1 season onward during the US GP weekend.
Following the requests from the fans, drivers and teams, Pirelli confirmed that they will move away from the ‘rainbow’ collection from the 2019 F1 season to just the three colours, so as to simplify the viewing for everyone watching the sport.
After the five they used in the 2017 season, Pirelli expanded the compounds to seven for 2018 with the addition of ‘Super Hard’ and ‘Hypersoft’ at the extreme ends. They had already introduced ‘Ultrasoft’ in 2016.
In totality, there were nine compounds available to the drivers and teams with seven slick tyres and two for wet weather conditions. For 2019, they have decided to do away with all those compounds – at least publicly.
It will be simply termed as hard, medium and soft – with white colour denoting the hard compound, yellow colour for the medium and red for the soft. The colours for the full wets and intermediate remain as blue and green respectively.
Despite the simplicity, Pirelli will internally still maintain the different ranges. However, the segregation will not affect in the naming as the different compounds will be denoted by codes which will be shared with the media, drivers and teams ahead of each grand prix.
Since every circuit has its own characteristics, Pirelli cannot carry the same type of compound at each event and so the difference will still be there with the plan to homologate five to six compounds.
“We’ve been talking about this with the Teams, FIA and Formula 1 for a while,” said Pirelli’s motorsport head Mario Isola. “The idea behind the change is to make all the tyres more easily recognizable and explainable – especially for television – while still clearly denoting which specific compounds are being used at each race”.
Last year, Pirelli revealed details of their compounds during the Abu Dhabi GP but this time they chose to launch it during the US GP weekend with Isola present along with Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo for the reveal.