Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Pirelli pleased with impact of new tyre regulations

Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery has praised the new tyre regulations for mixing up strategies in 2016.

This season has seen three tyre compounds selected for each race weekend with teams getting the freedom to pick 10 of the 13 sets themselves. The result has been a number of different strategies being employed throughout race weekends, with the pre-race selections even causing interest as with Ferrari’s decision to choose six sets of softs and six sets of supersofts in Sochi compared to ten sets of supersofts each for Red Bull and Haas.

Asked if the new regulations had achieved what Pirelli had been hoping for, Hembery told F1i: “In fairness it was everybody together.

“It was the teams, ourselves, the FIA that tried to come up with a system that would work for everybody. Clearly for the first few races we’ve seen a big impact of that where the use of three different compounds in the races has opened up all sorts of different scenarios. So I think that has to be said that so far it has been a success.”

And Hembery says the bonus for teams is that the extra compound allows drivers to have more possibilities to react during a race.

“People can adapt. Even if you look at Nico [Rosberg]’s race [in China], if you had asked me before I would have guessed he was doing a three-stop race and finishing with the supersoft, doing another stint. But in the end he had the opportunity and of course the choice because of that excellent second stint that he did - he did eight laps more than anybody on the soft tyre - that opened up for him almost endless possibilities to finish the race.

“They chose one that gave them a big margin. I’m quite sure the others were expecting an extra stop coming in there, so it was pretty interesting. The one thing that is different is that before the race it is very hard to call. What you feel might be the best strategy based on the information as the race progresses suddenly changes.”

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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.