Pirelli announces driver tyre choices for Melbourne

Pirelli has announced the tyre choices made by each team for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

New regulations see teams able to pick from three different tyre compounds, with an allocation of 13 sets per driver. Of those 13 sets, Pirelli will select two sets which have to be allocated for the race (of which a driver must use one set), while a set of the softest available compound may only be used in Q3. The other ten sets are free to be chosen by the teams, with drivers allowing different allocations.

The medium, soft and supersoft tyre has been nominated for the Australian Grand Prix, with Pirelli nominating one set of the medium and one set of the soft as mandatory to be available during the race, and one set of the supersoft compound for Q3.

Pirelli has now announced the full choices for each driver. Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are one of only three pairings to opt for different choices within teams, with Hamilton opting for just one set of mediums and six softs compared to two sets of mediums and five softs for Rosberg.

Sauber's Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson also opt for slightly different allocations, while Haas drivers Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez also differ between their medium and soft allocations.

The full list of tyre choices by each driver is below:

©PirelliSport

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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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