Pirelli is the Tyre-Partner of F1 since 2011 eventough the contract is reevlauted every three years but the controversy around that is another topic.
Until 2019 they produced 7 slick (dry weather) Tyres called:
ordered by hardness and coloured like the colours of the Tyres
- Superhard
- Hard [C1]
- Medium (white) [C2]
- Soft [C3]
- Supersoft
- Ultrasoft [C4]
- Hypersoft [C5]
And as you may have noticed, these names were pretty overwhelming. Also, the medium tyre was the hardest Tire rarely used. So they kicked the Superhard and Supersoft Tyres out and renamed the remaining from C1 to C5, C5 being the softest Tire
But what does the "hardness" of an Tyre mean?
Softer Tyres need less heat to work properly and have more grip but the downside is a shorter lifespan, whereas the harder Tyres last longer but lack grip, need more heat and therefore more time to get it into the optimal so called "Tyre-Window".
Back in the days the drivers could choose their Tyres but now Pirelli dictates a set of 3 Compounds (C1-C5) for every weekend but the Tyres always have to be related. For Example C5 can only be used with C4 and C3 and couldn't be used with C1 and C2 so the only possible Tyre variations for a weekend are:
from softest to hardest Compound selection
- C1 - C2 - C3
- C2 - C3 - C4
- C3 - C4 - C5
Each driver then gets 13 sets of dry weather tyres, four sets of intermediates and three sets of full wets.
Intermediates and full wets are selfexplainingly only for rain and have a special profile to push the water away. That way they loose tons of speed, barely get warm enough and need water to last longer eventough they create a dry path on the track. In conclusion: wet Tyres are only used in really heavy rain where the dry Tyres have no grip and would realisticly risk the car just floating of into the Barrier like Carlos Sainz did in Monaco 2023.
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