Pirelli unveils the tires for the first 4 Grand Prix
At the end of the last day of winter testing, which took place yesterday, Pirelli revealed the compounds that will be made available to the teams during the first four races of the year 2014.
The winter testing for the 2014 season concluded yesterday in Bahrain, and these twelve days allowed Pirelli to gain a better understanding of the new 2014 tires. The manufacturer took advantage of the conclusion of these tests to announce the tires that will be used for the first four Grand Prix of the year, in Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain, and China.
« The information collected during these three winter testing sessions has allowed us to make a choice of tires for the first four Grand Prix. They have all been used in very varied conditions, from the rain in Jerez to the temperatures above 25°C in Bahrain, and we have observed that they wear less and maintain a much more consistent level of performance than their predecessors. We have also achieved another of our objectives by reducing the amount of ‘marbles,’ those small pieces of rubber that littered the track and degraded the grip of the F1s. The ‘medium’ and ‘soft’ will be the ones best suited for the Australian, Bahrain, and Chinese Grand Prix. We hope they will allow teams an interesting search for balance between strategies and performances, with two or three pit stops per car. For Malaysia, the higher temperature conditions and the more abrasive track have led us to opt for the medium and hard, as we did in 2013, » thus confided Paul Hembery, director of Pirelli Motorsport.
| PIRELLI’S TIRE CHOICES IN 2014 | |||||
| 1 | Australian Grand Prix | Soft | Medium | ||
| 2 | Malaysian Grand Prix | Medium | Hard | ||
| 3 | Bahrain Grand Prix | Soft | Medium | ||
| 4 | Chinese Grand Prix | Soft | Medium | ||
In its statement, the Milan-based company also provided an initial assessment of the performance differences between the compounds made available to the teams, but this should change quite quickly: The performance gap between the different tire compounds, according to these tests, is as follows: the super soft is 0.7s per lap faster than the soft. The soft is about 1.3 to 1.5s per lap faster than the medium. And the medium is about 1.3 to 1.5s per lap faster than the hard. However, we expect these gaps to narrow over time as the teams’ understanding of the compounds improves.
Summary of performance gaps between Pirelli 2014 compounds
| Super Soft | Soft | Medium | Hard | |
| Super Soft | / | -0.7s | -2.1s | -3.5s |
| Soft | +0.7s | / | -1.4s | -2.8s |
| Medium | +2.1s | +1.4s | / | -1.4s |
| Hard | +3.5s | +2.8s | +1.4s | / |
