Pirelli is going to enforce the choice of tire types for the qualifying round in Hungary

The qualifying system will be slightly modified in Hungary. This only concerns the tires. The three qualifying sessions, Q1, Q2, and Q3, will still be held, but for this round of the Hungarian Grand Prix, the drivers will have to use designated tires for each session. With this rule, 11 sets of tires will be allocated instead of the usual 13.

Q1, which eliminates the 5 slowest drivers, will necessarily be done on hard tires, the white-striped ones.

Will Q2 be run on medium tires, and will the 15 drivers fight to enter the top 10 with yellow-striped tires?

The Q3, which determines the position of the ten fastest drivers, will be done on red tires, which the drivers use to achieve their best laps and hope to secure the pole position.

This type of qualification has already been used during the last sprint qualifications, also called shootout.

This new form of qualification is a challenge for the teams. « It will certainly add to the challenge. Regarding qualifications, we generally focus on how to get the most out of the soft tires on a single lap,” said Joseph McMillan, the chief race strategy engineer at Mercedes.

Forcing the use of hard or medium tires results in a constraint during the race.

« Regarding the race strategies, it will be fascinating to see what each team does. The way each team allocates their time and tire usage between qualifying and race preparations will be interesting,” explains the engineer.

Despite this change in classification, Mario Isola, the director of Pirelli Motorsport, says that drivers will still have a choice in their strategies: « With the alternative tire allocation, all teams will have two sets of hard tires, two sets of medium tires, and two sets of soft tires for the race ».

« With the current system, if they arrive at the race with only one set of hard tires, one set of medium tires, and all the rest are soft tires, we would find ourselves in a situation that is not normal and does not correspond to what we want,” argues the Pirelli boss.

Mario Isola could go back if this system doesn’t work. « If things work, we keep the rules, if they don’t work, we go back to the previous rule. The approach is the right one because unfortunately, even if you try to predict all possible details, there is always something that is unpredictable » concludes the Italian.

Note that this weekend in Hungary, the proposed tires are the softest in the range. The range goes from the C0 tire (the hardest) to the C5 tire, the softest. The hard tire here is the C3, the medium is the C4, and the soft one is the C5.