Pirelli will refer to ‘hard’, ‘medium’ and ‘soft’

From 2019, Pirelli’s tyre selections for each grand prix will be referred to in a simple manner: ‘hard’, ‘medium’ and ‘soft’.

Pirelli are bringing this in for the fans which are not too interested in the technical side of things, so they will only need to learn three names for the race weekend.

However, for those fans that like the information, they will tell us the choice of tyres for each weekend, right the way from the hyper-soft to the ultra-hard.

“We will tell you which is the compound we nominate for each race because obviously we are not going to race with the [same] three compounds everywhere,” said Mario Isola, Pirelli’s sporting director.

“We will find a way to give you the information but for spectators that are not really interested in technical stuff they will learn three colours, three names and that’s all.”

However, in making it easier for the fans, this could cause some confusion in the Pirelli factory, as a particular tyres could be given three names throughout the year.

For instance, so far this year, the red-striped soft tyres have been the hardest, medium and softest tyre at a race weekend.

“We will have different compounds associated to the same colour and when we have the tyres returning to the warehouse… we must be 100% sure we don’t mix [them]. We need to find a solution to avoid any minimal risk to mix the tyres,.” Isola said about the situation.

There could also be possible changes to the colour scheme of Pirelli’s tyre range, to make it more visible for fans watching at home.

“I will have another meeting with FOM and with the people from television to understand which are the three colours that are more visible,” Isola said. “Somebody told me on television it’s difficult to recognise white from yellow.”