New Pirellis Will Lead to Different Tire Strategies in F1 this Year Says Lotus

Lotus F1 Team trackside director Alan Permane thinks that the new Pirelli tires this year will lead to varied strategies among the teams this season. 

Pirelli has changed the tires this year to be more similar between compounds. It also claims that the tires will not last as long in total but will be at their peak performance longer than last season. The new tires also degrade faster when being used hard when cold. Due to these factors teams will be able to experiment more with their tire strategy. 

"We have a nicer situation this year where we have tires that are not as far apart lap time wise. In degradation terms, whereas last year we had tires that were very wide apart on lap time and with the same degradation, these are closer and the hard tends to degrade less. So you have probably got an opportunity to use them strategically, whereas last year you had to put softs on and then use the hard one right at the end,"  said Permane.

Permane said that the teams learned a lot of these details about the tires during the three rounds of testing. 

This is going to have a major impact on qualifying according to Permane. Teams will have to have a good race setup because the new tires go off so quickly when raced hard cold. 

Source: Autosport