Pirelli have released the available tyre compounds for the full 2021 calendar, a season set to comprise of a record 23 races.
The Italian company, who hold exclusive rights as the tyre supplier of Formula 1, have five specifications of slick tyres in their range, starting from C1s up to C5s, with the compounds getting softer as the number increases. There are then also the intermediate and full wet tyres.
And Pirelli have already released their tyre choices for the full 23-race calendar in 2021, confirming that teams will once again receive a standard allocation of the compounds, rather than the old system where each team had a choice on how many sets of each tyres they wanted for a race weekend.
Pirelli state that there will be a “fixed allocation for each driver of two hard sets, three medium sets, and eight soft sets at each race.”
Regulation changes for 2021 have removed the need to confirm tyre choices 14 weeks in advance for long-haul events and eight weeks in advance for European events, allowing for the choices to be fixed for the full season.
This comes as a result of the ongoing global pandemic and the potential logistical issues that it may cause during the season.
In a Pirelli press release, their motorsport boss Mario Isola said: “Announcing all the selections for the year right now will help the teams and the drivers with their planning, also allowing for maximum flexibility just in case the calendar has to change due to Covid-19 restrictions, as we saw last year.
“The selections themselves are on the whole similar to last year (or 2019, in the case of races not run in 2020), which means that teams should have plenty of data to fall back on – but we have two races where the nominations are softer.
“The first is Azerbaijan, where our C2 hard tyre wasn’t used last time, so we are now going with the softest selection of all: C3, C4 and C5.
“Then we have Brazil, where we will take the C2, C3 and C4 this year, as the C1 that was selected as the hardest choice last time didn’t show a particularly big advantage in terms of wear over the medium.
“In both cases, the softer nomination could lead to a greater variety of race strategies.”
