Hard tyres to make first 2018 appearance at Silverstone

The British Grand Prix will see the first appearance of Pirelli's hard compound tyres in 2018.

The tyre manufacturer provides teams with a choice of three compounds for each race from its full line-up of seven different types of dry weather rubber.

For Silverstone, the tyres on offer will be the hard, medium and soft compounds. The tyres will featured reduced tread depth at Silverstone to tackle overheating on the resurfaced track. Barcelona and Paul Ricard are the other two circuits where the modififed specification will be featured.

Silverstone requires the hardest overall selection of tyres this year. However all the 2018 compounds are described as being as step softer than their counterparts last season. That means this year's British GP selection corresponds to a line-up consisting of soft, medium and supersoft last season.

The last time the 2017 hard compound was rolled out was for the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catyaluna. Teams complained that it was simply too hard to use in the race. As a result it made no further appearances during the season, and the overall line-up of tyres was made softer.

That means the 'superhard' compound is now the equivalent hardest compound in Pirelli's range. But it was included only as a emergency backup in case there were problems with the softer options. With things having gone well, it is not expected to make an appearance in 2018.

Mercedes plays it safe with conservative tyre choice for Spain

So far this season, Monaco and Canada have been assigned the softest line-up of tyres. Both feature Pirelli's new hypersoft pink tyre along with ultrasoft and supersoft tyres appropriate for street circuits.

Australia, Baku, France and Austria saw Pirelli dispatching ultrasofts, supersofts and soft compounds to the venue. Bahrain and Spain saw supersofts, softs and mediums reporting for duty.

The strangest scenario was for the Chinese Grand Prix. It was the first and to date only time that a 'non-continuous' selection of tyres were available. Drivers were able to use soft and medium tyres, but the supersofts were left at home in favour of ultras.

In total, the softs and supersofts have both been selected for eight races. he ultras have been part of the line-up on offer in seven races and the mediums for just four.

For each race weekend, each driver gets one set of each compound on offer. After that they get a choice about how to make up the rest of their 13-set allocation for the weekend, with some restrictions.

The driver must have one set of mediums and one set of hards available for the race. Assuming the race is held in dry conditions, one of each must be used at some point in the race. The soft compound is the designated tyre for Q3 in qualifying.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.