Pirelli has revealed the introduction of two new slick tyre compounds, one at each end of the range to make a total of seven, which will be made available from the start of the 2018 Formula 1 season.
It was already known the Italian supplier was developing a new soft tyre for next season, after holding a poll on social media to allow fans to name it. The final result saw 'HyperSoft' win and will feature a pink stripe as used on the UltraSoft tyre at the United States Grand Prix.
What was new on Thursday was the unveiling of a 'SuperHard' tyre which will feature the orange stripe used on the current Hard compound and be designed for circuits where tyre wear is usually excessive, such as Spain's Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya and Suzuka. To accommodate the change, the 2018 Hard tyre will feature a blue stripe as seen in the photo above.
“Compared to this year, when the tyres grew by 25% to fit a brand-new generation of cars, the changes for next year are less far-reaching," Pirelli's Head of Motorsport Mario Isola claimed. "However, we’re
pleased to present some important innovations with softer and faster compounds across the range, including the new HyperSoft.
"We realised that, under the unique circumstances of this year, some of our 2017 compounds were perhaps conservative and the tyres we have created for 2018 addresses this, in line with the objective of having around two pit stops at most races.
"However, the fundamental design concept of the tyres hasn’t changed next year, preserving the attributes that all drivers have appreciated this year and allowing them to push hard from the start to the finish of each stint. The new range consists of faster tyres that should lead to even harder and more spectacular racing in 2018.”
Three compounds will continue to be made available for each race weekend and, as Isola explained, the aim of Pirelli is to ensure the trend from this year, when teams heavily favoured the softer compounds in their allocations, is replaced by greater variety.
"For next year we want to be a bit more aggressive, so that means that all the three compounds will play a role during the race weekend," he said. "The target is to have different possible strategies and to have that you need a certain delta lap time between compounds but also a crossover with different degradations.
"We will follow what was in the target letter that was defined at the end of 2015, that means the target in terms of delta lap time is 0.9s but with different degradations, so if a team is more focused on the softer choices they should have a strategy of two to three pit stops. If they go on the harder side they should target a race of one or two pits. This is to encourage different strategies during the race."
Teams will get a first taste of the seven different compounds when they test with Pirelli in Abu Dhabi for two days after this weekend's season finale.
