Pirelli announces tyre selection for 2021

Formula One’s sole tyre supplier Pirelli has revealed the tyre compounds that it will take to the 23 grands prix of the 2021 FIA Formula One World Championship.

Pirelli has changed its approach to the tyre selection for the race meetings in the 2021 F1 season. The tyre manufacturer has announced its plans regarding the tyre allocations for the 23 grands prix that make up the 2021 calendar.

The choices are generally similar to those planned for last year or 2019, but there are changes to the races in Azerbaijan and Brazil. On both venues, the choice is a step softer than in 2019 while there will be two new additions to the calendar with the arrival of the Dutch and the Saudi Arabia Grands Prix.

The Milan-based manufacturer usually provides teams and drivers with a flexible free tyre choice for each race weekend, but that will not happen in 2021. As was the case last year, there will be a fixed allocation for each driver of two hard sets, three medium sets, and eight soft sets at each race.

The announcement also indicated that the tyre manufacturer and the FIA reserve the right to alter the selection up to 15 days before each race should circumstances require it.

Mario Isola, Head of F1 and Car Racing 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,” Isola concluded.