Pirelli has announced the tyre compounds that will be used at the first four races and given an indication of the gaps in performance between them.
Medium and soft compound tyres will be used at the season-opener in Australia, the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Chinese Grand Prix while hards and mediums will be used at the Malaysian Grand Prix. Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery said he was pleased with the performance of the tyres during pre-season testing.
“The information gained over all three pre-season tests has helped us to come up with the tyre choices for the start of the season, having run with the new 2014 tyres in all conditions now: ranging from rain in Jerez to ambient temperatures exceeding 25 degrees centigrade in Bahrain,” he said. “The conclusion we can draw so far is that the 2014 tyres are more consistent and wear less than their predecessors, without compromising performance. We’re also meeting another of our objectives with one more step towards the reduction of ‘marbles’ on the track.
“The medium and soft compounds are well matched to the expected race conditions in Australia, Bahrain and China, providing what we expect to be the right balance between performance and strategy with two to three pit stops per car. The more abrasive and hotter conditions of Malaysia have led us to nominate the hard and medium compounds there, as we did last year.”
According to Pirelli, the supersoft is around 0.7s per lap faster than the soft, the soft is around 1.3-1.5s per lap quicker than the medium, and the medium is around1.3-1.5s per lap quicker than the hard. However, these gaps are expected to come down as the teams improve their understanding of the tyres during the season.
Info: ESPN, Image: Pirelli
