Pirelli presents its new tires

It’s a presentation that generates fewer expectations than that of the very first Formula 1 car of the 2012 season – the Caterham CT01, tomorrow – but it holds some significance as the Italian manufacturer, Pirelli, has unveiled its range of tires for the coming year.

Building on a 2011 season where, having responded quite satisfactorily to the requirements of the FIA’s specifications, the spectacle was present, often thanks to a much greater tire degradation, sometimes forcing teams to stop four or even five times during races, the brand is keen to continue on this path.

A record that Marco Tronchetti Provera, the president of Pirelli, welcomed for the return of the teams: « After the positive experience of last year, the teams asked us to continue supplying tires whose characteristic was to help make races more spectacular in 2011. And that is what we did; we optimized the compounds and profiles to ensure both even better performance and consistency and the deliberate degradation that characterized the P Zero in 2011. »

For the upcoming season, what can we expect? « We anticipate unpredictable races, with a wide range of strategies and a large number of pit stops: all the elements that competitors and spectators greatly enjoyed last season. The development work on the new compounds was carried out throughout the 2011 season, thanks to an impressive learning ability and responsiveness from our engineers, who are ready to continue the developments in the coming year ».

Paul Hembery, Competition Director at Pirelli – and whose exclusive quirky interview conducted by Motors Inside you can find – indicated that the idea was to reduce the performance gaps between tire types to make races closer. Overall, all the compounds are soft. The hard tire of 2012 is closer to last season’s medium. These are among the fastest tires we have ever produced and they are definitely more performance-oriented. Despite this, the rate of degradation has been increased and we are still aiming for at least two to three stops per race.

As you can see in the photo accompanying this article, the P Zero slick tires have retained the same colors: red corresponds to “supersofts,” yellow to “softs,” white (more pronounced) to “mediums,” and gray (darker) to “hards.” As for the rain tires, they have been renamed: they are now called « Cinturato », which was the name of the first tire model that Pirelli used in Formula 1 in the 1950s. The green tire corresponds to “intermediates” and the blue tire to “extremes.”

In the realm of technological advancements, Pirelli has also taken the opportunity to announce a new feature making its debut this season: each tire will be equipped with an electronic system that provides real-time access to its condition, temperature, and degradation level. The data collected by Pirelli will be stored on the brand’s truck servers, allowing both the Italian manufacturer’s engineers and the teams’ engineers to analyze them, thanks to detailed reports provided by Pirelli to the teams after each stint. This system will activate when the tire is mounted on the rim. One of the goals could also be to enable viewers to immediately know the type of tire a driver is using during a race; tests are expected to take place with Formula One Management to allow this valuable information to be displayed on screen during television broadcasts.