As Formula 1 is finally ready to get back to action, Pirelli have released the tyre compounds for the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Italian tyre manufacturers will be bringing the exact same compounds to the Red Bull Ring as they did last season, with the C2 compound as the white wall hard, the C3 compound as the yellow wall medium, and the C4 as the red wall soft.
These compounds are the very middle range of Pirelli’s five compounds, excluding the hardest C1 and the softest C5.
Drivers will all be allocated the same amount of tyres, two sets of hards, three sets of mediums, and eight sets of softs for this race weekend. These same tyre compounds and allocations will apply for the second race of the double header, the Formula 1 Pirelli Styrian Grand Prix.
Grands prix at the Spielberg circuit are usually a one stop affair, and blistering is still a potential issue even though this was greatly reduced with the 2019 tyre specifications. Pirelli’s Head of F1 and Car Racing Mario Isola expects a “level playing field” coming out of the pandemic pause.
“The tyres are exactly the same as last year, so probably the biggest variable element will be the ‘rust’ that teams and drivers might have accumulated after such a long time away from a race weekend.” Isola said in a press release.
“To get back up to speed, some teams have recently run two-year-old cars in private testing or had filming days with the current cars. In both cases, these run on special tyres that are a long way from race specification, so everyone starts again this weekend on an absolutely level playing field”.
