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Pirelli to supply extra tyres in Melbourne

The extra Pirelli tyres will have to be returned after the first two practice sessions on Friday © Sutton Images

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• Australian Grand Prix

Pirelli have announced that they will be supplying teams with an extra set of tyres for the Friday practice sessions in Melbourne.

Teams experienced a significant drop off in performance from the tyres throughout pre-season testing, so a set of the hard compound tyres will be added to the original allocation to help the drivers set their cars up for the first race of the season.

"Weather conditions are likely to be different to what was experienced so far in testing," a Pirelli statement read. "Which is why the teams will be given an extra set of prime tyres for use during Friday free practice, bringing their total allocation up to 12 sets of dry-weather tyres over the course of the weekend and allowing them to run more laps in free practice to finalise the set-up."

Pirelli's motorsport director Paul Hembrey said he was looking forward to the race weekend, and finally getting an opportunity to see if the tyres help to deliver more entertaining races.

"This is the moment that we've been building up to for more than a year now and it's very exciting for all of us," he said. "Our tyres this year are designed to be different to what we have seen before in Formula One, but I think all the teams have managed to gather some useful information about them in testing.

We're aiming for between two and three pit stops in Australia, which in some ways is against our company DNA as our road car tyres are designed to be as durable as possible. But Formula One is a very different case, because our remit from the teams and promoter was to provide entertainment. With that in mind, we're just keen to get going now and it will be fascinating to see exactly how the drivers and teams are going to use our tyres to employ different strategies during the race. We've noticed a few differences between the teams already in testing, and it's going to be very interesting to find out exactly how that translates into a race situation."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.