• European Grand Prix

Pirelli makes compound change

ESPNF1 Staff
June 21, 2011 « Hamilton seeking consolidation | »
The supersoft (red) compound has been dropped in favour of the soft (yellow) © Sutton Images
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Pirelli will be supplying the medium and soft compounds at the European Grand Prix, having originally announced it would be the supersoft that was given to the teams.

With the hard and soft compounds being the preferred choice at the first five races of the season, the soft and supersoft had been paired together in Monaco and Canada. Despite also being a street circuit, Valencia sees the debut of the medium compound due to its more high-speed nature, and the supersoft was due to be the option tyre. However, with the weather forecast predicting high temperatures, Pirelli has switched to the more durable soft rubber.

Pirelli's motorsport director Paul Hembery said that there would still be a substantial performance difference between the two types of tyre, with the medium compound having been made more durable in recent weeks.

"Tyre wear on this circuit is likely to be quite high because of the track layout, the nature of the surface, and also the weather conditions, which should be very warm," Hembery said. "For all these reasons, we've selected the medium and soft tyres, which should provide the teams with a good level of resistance, plenty of different opportunities for strategy and about a second per lap difference between the compounds.

"The PZero White tyres have been adjusted slightly from our original specification to make them a bit more durable, along the lines of the tweak we made to the PZero Silver hard tyre in Spain, and this was the compound that the teams tested during Friday's free practice in Canada, giving us plenty of useful data."

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