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Pirelli announces tyre choices for opening races

The new Pirelli tyre range has orange markings on the hard tyres © Getty Images

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Pirelli has announced its compound choices for the first four races of the season, with a different selection scheduled for each race.

At the first race in Australia supersoft and medium tyres will be used. A week later in Malaysia medium and hard will be made available. At the third round in China soft and medium tyres will be on offer and in Bahrain soft and hard tyres will be supplied.

Pirelli gave the following explanations for its choices:

"In Australia, the P Zero White medium and P Zero Red supersoft tyres will be nominated: the first time that Pirelli has nominated the softest compound in the range for Melbourne. The full step in the compound choice should ensure a performance gap between the cars that allows strategy to come into play.

"The choice of the P Zero Orange hard and P Zero White medium for Malaysia - the two hardest tyres in the range - will cater for the high temperatures and abrasive surface that is a well-known characteristic of the Far Eastern track.

"The P Zero White medium and P Zero Yellow soft tyres are nominated for China: the best choice for the comparatively high degradation expected as a result of the demanding track layout, which leads to close racing.

"Like Australia, Bahrain has a brand new nomination this year compared to last year: P Zero Orange hard and P Zero Yellow soft. This is designed to ensure plenty of speed in qualifying coupled with the durability needed for the race, which is again often held in high temperatures."

Pirelli has four new compounds this year with each roughly a step softer than last year's rubber. The tyres also have a new structure which is aimed at easing warm-up issues while also inducing degradation to make races more exciting.

As was the case last year, the teams will receive six sets of the harder compound and five sets of the softer tyre to last them the weekend, with one set of the harder compound returned after FP1 and a set of both the harder and softer returned after FP2 and FP3. Teams will also be supplied with four sets of intermediate tyres and three sets of wets over the weekend.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.