Pirelli is seeking to increase the variety of compounds in its choice in 2025 to deal with the variety of road circuits Formulation 1 now races on.
The tire provider presently has six slick compounds it may possibly choose from for every race weekend, with three nominated because the smooth, medium and onerous choices at every venue. With the 24-race calendar together with a variety of observe traits however a variety of newer venues being road circuits — the most recent being Las Vegas — Pirelli has been testing an excellent softer compound at Paul Ricard this week to attempt to go well with the larger variety of non permanent tracks.
“We collected numerous good data [testing] — we finalized roughly the development of the 2025 slick tires,” Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola mentioned. “We’ve got very promising compounds to cut back overheating for 2025. The thought is to additionally introduce a brand new C6 compound, a softer one, as a result of within the calendar we’ve got increasingly road circuits and we’d like softer compounds.
“So we’re going to transfer the vary just a little bit on the smooth facet, all the time attempting to cut back the overheating. The true drawback is to search out the proper trade-off between overheating and degradation, as a result of we have to hold degradation however scale back overheating. And that’s not all the time simple as a result of the 2 parts are related.”
The brand new compound is to be used on a number of circuits slightly than particularly Monaco — one thing Isola lately instructed RACER was unimaginable to check successfully — and the Italian says it wasn’t a request from the groups to introduce an excellent softer compound, however one thing Pirelli has picked up on lately that will assist its choices.
“That was our concept contemplating the calendar and contemplating the place we go to race,” he mentioned. “And clearly the goal we’ve got to encourage a combination between one- and two-stop methods. So we made a proposal to go a bit softer.
“The request was to cut back the overheating. The danger is that when you scale back the overheating they modify [tires] much less, as a result of clearly they will run extra laps with out excessive degradation. If we go on this route then we have to have softer compounds within the vary to pick the compounds correctly for every occasion.
“So our proposal was not having any constraints on the variety of [compounds] we homologate. We mentioned, ‘Let’s take into consideration a C6, softer than C5, that may open up completely different methods’ and we examined one in Paul Ricard a few days in the past. It’s the primary try however the concept is to go on this route and doubtless homologate six compounds subsequent 12 months.”
