Bridgestone, tyre supplier to Formula 1, have announced the tyre compounds that will be made available to teams in the race weekends upto and including the Turkish Grand Prix.
In all races the company will continue to leave a step between each of the compounds, including at Monaco, where the medium compound will be used for the first time. Giving teams two different compounds which are not next to each other in the series is meant to give them a tyre management challenge, as the hard and medium tyres have a higher temperature working range than the soft and super soft varieties.
In all races, a green band on the edge of the tyre side walls will indicate the softer of the two compounds in use that weekend.
This weekend in Melbourne, and in the following races in Malaysia, China and Spain, it will be the Soft and Hard tyres that Bridgestone will be supplying. After the race in Barcelona it is Monaco, where the teams will be provided with Super Soft and Medium compounds. In Turkey, the Soft and Hard tyres will return.
Hirohide Hamashima, Bridgestone Head of Motorsport Tyre Development, explains the reasoning behind these allocations. “Deciding which tyres to bring to a Grand Prix is always a difficult decision, especially as we don't receive advance notification of the exact weather we will see at the race circuit over the three days of running. Tyre performance in Bahrain was good, however we remain vigilant and safety is the overriding concern for us.
“Shanghai and Barcelona are both quite severe circuits and Istanbul, as we have seen in the past is particularly severe. This is why we are bringing the hardest allocation whilst still leaving a gap in our range between the two compounds. For Monaco this year we will have a gap in the allocation too, which is a change from the two softest compounds which we have brought here previously. We have a harder prime compound for Monaco because of the heavier fuel loads and longer stint lengths that the current rules encourage. We believe this allocation should provide a reasonable and interesting difference between prime and option tyres for this event.”
