Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Supersoft tyre still an unknown for Pirelli

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Pirelli says the supersoft tyre is still an unknown compound following pre-season testing in Spain.

The tyre manufacturer has changed the supersoft tyre ahead of 2015, with its aim to make it a more usable tyre this season. Mercedes was the only team not to run the supersoft at the Circuit de Catalunya, with its ability to set the fastest times of the final two tests on soft tyres pointing to a significant performance advantage.

However, with low track temperatures on the majority of days during testing in Barcelona - where the supersoft was used - and taking in to account the high speed nature of the track, sporting director Mario Isola told F1i the teams running the supersoft were not able to fully exploit it.

“The only thing we are missing is the new supersoft compound,” Isola said. “We have some feedback but we believe that this circuit is not the right one for the supersoft compound.

“We saw a lap time delta between the soft and the supersoft that was less than one second. We believe that’s not completely true because the supersoft compound starts to degrade during the first timed lap.

“So the soft was a good choice for performance and the medium was the better solution for these conditions. The hard is a high working range compound so it was a bit too hard for these conditions.”

Click here for the gallery from day four of the final test

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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.