Pirelli to take ultrasoft to Australia

©Pirelli Media

Pirelli has named the tyre compounds it will take to the first two races of the 2017 F1 season, with the ultrasoft being used in Australia.

2017 will see new tyre regulations introduced, with wider tyres designed to help increase cornering speeds. With tyres needing to be selected 15 weeks ahead of flyaway races, the first two - in Australia and China - have already been nominated by Pirelli.

The tyre manufacturer has opted to go one step softer for the race in Melbourne than it did in 2016, with the soft, supersoft and ultrasoft tyres being selected. Of these, one set or softs and one set of supersofts must be saved for the race, while one set of ultrasofts are required for use in Q3.

The Chinese Grand Prix will be the second round on next year's calendar, taking place two weeks after Melbourne on April 9. For the race in Shanghai, Pirelli has nominated the medium, soft and supersoft tyre compounds, with a set of each of the harder two compounds again required to be available during the race. One set of supersofts must be saved for Q3.

The nominations are largely symbolic as Pirelli has previously announced all teams will have exactly the same tyre compounds allocated to them for the first five races of the season - consisting of two of the hardest compounds, four of the middle compound and seven of the softest - as an introduction to the new regulations.

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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.