Pirelli hoping to change the compound of its hard tyres until the Spanish Grand Prix
The lone tyre suppliers of the 2011 Formula 1 season, Pirelli have recently announced that they are planning to change the compound of their hard tyres for this season at the Spanish Grand Prix.
The new Pirelli tyres are quite different from the Bridgestones of 2010 as these tyres degrade much faster comparatively, as a result of which, the element of a race strategy is back in the limelight now and performance has improved vitally as well.
Pirelli were asked by the organizers of the sport to do so in order to make racing more exciting and to increase the unpredictability of a Grand Prix. As a result, the teams are now going for at least a 2-3 pit strategy at each race, keeping aside the berserk
1 pit stop run by Sergio Perez at the Australian Grand Prix.
Paul Hembery, Pirelli’s Motorsport director has recent stated that Pirelli is now feeling that the hard tyres do not last as long as they expected them to.
“Unfortunately the tyre itself wasn't tested in any way and form as much as we wanted to [in Malaysia]. It's essentially a replacement for the current hard tyre to give two or three more laps tyre life than we have and less degradation, but the teams didn't
test it to the extent that we wanted to,” Hembery told the media.
The tyre suppliers tested a new compound during the practice sessions of the Malaysian Grand Prix and Hembery revealed that another version of those tyres will be used at the Friday practice sessions in Turkey this weekend.
“We're going to test something that's in family with that in Turkey, if it doesn't rain on Friday. If it works in Turkey on Friday and we're happy with the results, we'll discuss it with the FIA and we'll introduce it from Barcelona onwards as the hard compound
replacement,” he added.
The European phase of the 2011 Formula 1 season is expected to commence this weekend in Turkey and since the European circuits are quite tough on the cars, the new hard tyres are going to affect racing noticeably if they bring changes to the compound.
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