Pirelli wants to change the color code of its tires for 2012

This year, Pirelli decided to mark its tires with a specific color irrespective of their allocation during the Grand Prix. The super-softs were marked in red, the softs in yellow, the mediums in white, the hards in silver, the intermediate tires in blue, and the wet tires in orange.

And even though the Italian manufacturer had already slightly changed the color of its tires so that fans could more easily distinguish which driver had which tire, it hasn’t always been easy, especially when mediums and hards were used, as white and silver weren’t always easily distinguishable for TV viewers and even more so for spectators.

Paul Hembery, Pirelli’s motorsport director, indicated that changes would likely be made for the next season, both in terms of colors and how this color is visible on the tire.

I think we need to have a bit of diversity and we need to improve the marking, particularly for the hard and medium tires with silver and white. So we need to differentiate that better and add new colors, so that the tires are more easily recognizable when they are running. We are working on it. We haven’t found a solution yet, and maybe we could set up a contest for people to choose Pirelli’s colors for next year, Paul Hembery told Autosport.

Paul Hembery also specified that the most difficult part for Pirelli was the coloring of the tire, especially its position and shape, because it is more complex to implement in factories than choosing a color.

It’s more about the process – the color itself can be decided later. What takes time is working to apply color to the tires. It might seem easy, but when you try to print something on a curved side, and considering that it has to withstand kerbs and rubber, it’s a rather complex process in the end.