First sign of F1 2024 season arrives already with three-race announcement made

Henry Valantine 01 Dec 2023 2:08 PM

Bahrain Grand Prix 2023 race. March F1 2024

Bahrain will get the F1 2024 season underway next March.

It has only been a few days since the 2023 season, but Pirelli have already confirmed their tyre selections for the first races of the F1 2024 season.

Along with it comes the confirmation that they will be dropping back to five dry compounds next season too, with C1-C5 being the choices of slick tyres available to the tyre manufacturer next year.

The C0 tyres – the hardest available in 2023 – were not used at all in the season, so Pirelli have decided to drop the compound for the F1 2024 campaign.

Pirelli make first F1 2024 announcement with tyre choices for opening three rounds

With three months before the first race of 2024 starts in Bahrain, Pirelli confirmed their tyre choices for the first three rounds of next season.

The Bahrain Grand Prix will use the hardest C1, C2 and C3 compounds as the hard, medium and soft respectively to cope with the higher demands on wear around Sakhir.

A week later, the tyres will get a step softer in Saudi Arabia as the C2, C3 and C4 are used as the hard, medium and soft around Jeddah, before the same happens again and the C3, C4 and C5 tyres are used in Australia.

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Extended tyre testing has been taking place throughout the 2023 season to get the F1 2024 tyres ready by the sport’s tyre manufacturer, and Pirelli have confirmed the constructions have now been homologated and will be ready for use next season.

Pre-season testing will take place in Bahrain from February 21-23, with Pirelli confirming that the teams will be able to use all five compounds of tyre to gather data before the 2024 season gets underway in earnest.

Pirelli confirmed an extension to their current supply deal to supply Formula 1 tyres earlier in the year, seeing off a bid from Bridgestone for that particular market.