Pirelli to supply extra tyres for season opening grand prix in Australia – Formula 1 news
The new lone tyre suppliers of Formula 1 Pirelli have revealed that they are going to supply teams with an extra set of tyres for the Friday practice sessions at the 2011 season opening race that is scheduled to take place on 27 March in Australia.
Most of the teams claim that they have experienced a major drop off in performance from the new Pirelli tyres throughout the pre-season test sessions. As a result, it has been confirmed that Pirelli is going to supply a new set of hard tyres in order to
help the drivers set their new cars up with the best possible package before the first race of the season.
“Which is why the teams will be given an extra set of prime tyres for use during Friday free practice, bringing their total allocation up to 12 sets of dry-weather tyres over the course of the weekend and allowing them to run more laps in free practice to
finalise the set-up,” a Pirelli statement read.
Paul Hembery, Pirelli’s motorsport director stated that he is looking forward to the first race weekend of the 2011 Formula 1 season as the lone tyre supplying company will finally get to see if their product makes the sport more entertaining or not.
“This is the moment that we've been building up to for more than a year now and it's very exciting for all of us. Our tyres this year are designed to be different to what we have seen before in Formula One, but I think all the teams have managed to gather
some useful information about them in testing,” he said.
Other than that, he added that Pirelli is aiming for a two to three pit stop strategy in Australia which is against their company DNA as their road car tyres are designed to be as durable as possible.
Nevertheless, Formula 1 is obviously quite different and it would be interesting to see how the teams perform with the new tyres as compared to their runs in the 2010 season.
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