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Pirelli set to make changes to compounds

A total of 82 pit stops were made in the Spanish Grand Prix due to the tyre degradation © Sutton Images

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Pirelli is going to change the tyre compounds in time for the British Grand Prix after admitting that four pit stops in Barcelona were too many.

Fernando Alonso won the race on a four-stop strategy, with the majority of the field also opting to stop four times. Paul Hembery said that was more than Pirelli had been targeting and that it would hope to have a solution before the British Grand Prix in three races' time.

"Our aim is to have between two and three stops at every race, so it's clear that four is too many," Hembery said. "In fact, it's only happened once before, in Turkey during our first year in the sport. We'll be looking to make some changes, in time for Silverstone, to make sure that we maintain our target and solve any issues rapidly."

Hembery also told ESPN exclusively that he'd rather make the changes sooner but that the tyre manufacturer may be pushed for time.

"We'll discuss it tomorrow. We've got a meeting lined up for tomorrow and we'll do our plans. Silverstone is probably realistic, I'd prefer to do it for Canada; Monte Carlo is too late but maybe Canada would have been good as well. It's not quite as aggressive - Canada - compared to here, this is a big circuit on the front left and the rear left tyres and you saw a number of cars suffering on the rear tyres today; Mercedes in particular had huge degradation on the rear tyres. So by Silverstone we need to have it right."

We aim for 2-3 pit stops. Today was too many, we got it wrong, too aggressive. We will make changes, probably from Silverstone.

— Paul Hembery (@PaulHembery) May 12, 2013

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