Pirelli has stated that it would expand its line of slick tyre compounds for the 2023 Formula 1 season.
The new compound, designated C0, will be used in conjunction with the C1 through C5 range that has been in use since the 2019 season.
The existing C1 compound is simply getting a new name, therefore the C0 compound won’t actually be new. The new C1 tyre, which will mark the sixth compound, will provide drivers with greater traction in 2023 than the previous model did.
“We have introduced a new C1 compound and have decided to homologate for next year six compounds, not five,” said Mario Isola, Pirelli’s Head of F1. “The current C1 that worked quite well at, for example, Zandvoort and Silverstone, we didn’t want to eliminate.”
“We decided to introduce a new C1 with more grip compared to the old C1, so the old C1 is now the C0 to avoid renaming all the others.”
“We have the new C1 and then the C2, C3, C4 and C5 are the same as this year. The new C1 is much closer to the C2.”
“I would say the only target we didn’t achieve was a new C3 more in the centre between C2 and C4.”
Each race weekend, Pirelli delivers three tyre compounds, allowing teams to switch up their race-day strategies. Isola, though, disputes the claim that the sixth compound will result in wider gaps between the tires shipped to a grand prix race.
“In some cases we can have a step between the compounds we want to select but not always,” Isola added. “It’s an option we have in our pocket that we keep.”
“I believe we have an idea of what we want to allocate for next season. We want to keep the flexibility to change, or to fine-tune, this allocation according to the result of the pre-season test in Bahrain and the first races.”
“We will define soon the compounds for the first three or four races, obviously because we need to manufacture and sea-freight the tyres, but then we want to keep a bit of flexibility to decide for the second part of the championship but it doesn’t mean you will have two or three steps in between.”
