F1 Fanatic

Pirelli are likely to announce their next choices of tyre compounds fairly soon – the last announcement took us up to the next race at Monaco.

Given the debate over the role tyres are playing in the sport at present the decision on the next allocation will be watched with some interest to see if any pressure has been brought to bear on Pirelli to choose more conservative tyres.

For their part, Pirelli point out that the current policy of tyres is driven by the teams. Nonetheless, some individuals have questioned the effect they are having on F1, such as Michael Schumacher and, more recently, Dietrich Mateschitz.

With that in mind, what tyres should Pirelli pick for the coming races? Here’s what they chose last year – keep in mind the soft, medium and hard compounds are already softer to begin with this year.

Montreal – Super-soft/Soft
Valencia – Soft/Medium
Silverstone – Soft/Hard
Hungaroring – Super Soft/Soft

Hockenheimring is yet to hold a race with the Pirellis.

Here’s the tyre allocations so far this year and how they compare to last year:

Pirelli announce tyre options for Bahrain, Spain and Monaco

And remember to have your say and cast your vote on F1′s tyre policy in this article:

Should F1 change its tyre strategy?

Not sure if making a step in between would be the right thing for Montreal, and going for harder tyres surely is not the right way, so I would hope that one stays as it is.
I would say that for Valencia it might be a good one to mirror Barcelona a bit, only a step softer (going for SuperSoft / medium) to recreate the effect of the supersofts being perfect for qualifying but the harder tyre really coming into its own during the race.
Silverstone seems to be fine this way, although the softer compounds this year might make it tough on the teams and drivers.
For the Hungaroring, I would say it would be nice to go with harder tyres only if one were to allowed to go the distance on them, therefore I do not expect any changes there.

For Hockenheim I would probably be rather playing it safe and going with the middle tyres, because of the lack of previous experience there. On the other hand, Pirelli might feel that teams are getting experience with the tyres or see the positives in having a step in between, possibly giving us a bit of a qualifying tyre with the supersoft and then the medium for the race.

I dont necessarily have an opinion on the tyres they should use on the other races. But for valencia I would much prefer that they use soft and hard compund tyres (whatever they should choose I just want that to be a big gap between performance of the 2 tyres) From what I remember last year the valencia grand prix was a borefest.

So Pirelli stuck with the same tyre options as last year for Canada, Europe and Britain:

Pirelli announce unchanged tyre allocations for next three races

The question now is what will they bring for their first race at the Hockenheimring and the races after that?