Pirelli names three compounds for Bahrain, China

Pirelli has nominated the medium, soft and supersoft compounds for the 2016 races in Bahrain and China.

New tyre regulations see three compounds nominated by Pirelli for each race weekend, with the softest compound required to be used in Q3 and at least one of two compounds nominated by Pirelli mandatory for the race. As in Australia, the medium, soft and supersoft tyres have been selected.

As a result, one set of supersoft tyres must be used in the final part of qualifying, while Pirelli has nominated the medium and soft compounds as the race compounds, of which both must be available and at least one set must be used during the race.

Teams are therefore able to have free choice of 10 of their 13 compounds per race weekend, and will have to make their selections in over the coming weeks.

Selections for the Australian Grand Prix must be submitted today (December 17).

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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.

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