Next year, there will be just three P Zero colors at each race. These will always be the same – white, yellow and red – denoting the hard, medium and soft tire choices respectively at every Grand Prix. But that doesn’t mean that there will be only three tire compounds.
Instead, the hard, medium and soft tire compounds will continue to vary to suit the different characteristics of each track. For instance, a Red soft tire for Monaco will differ substantially from a Red soft tire for Silverstone or Suzuka. The precise number of tire compounds available, covering a wide spectrum from soft to hard, will be communicated in December after homologation from the FIA. Before every race next year, Pirelli will reveal which exact tire compounds form the hard, medium and soft choices for the weekend. This new system makes it easy for the casual fan to tell the difference between the tires, yet still allows people who want more detail to know which of the specific tire compounds available are being used.
The colors for the Cinturato intermediate tire and full wet tires remain unchanged next year – green and blue respectively. Mario Isola, Pirelli’s Head of Car Racing – “We’ve been talking about this with the Teams, FIA and Formula 1 for a while. The idea behind the change is to make all the tires more easily recognizable and explainable – especially for television – while still clearly denoting which specific tire compounds are being used at each race”.