Pirelli Introduces New Dry and Wet F1 Tires for 2012
Pirelli is changing all the slick tires
for the 2012 Formula One World Championship, and introducing a
modified version of the wet tire. Only the intermediate tire - the
Cinturato Green - remains unaltered.
The characteristics of the tires
requested by the teams for 2012 are in line with the expectations
from last year, where the teams asked for tires that help to provide
entertaining competition with at least two pit stops per race for a
wide variety of strategies. The new design of Pirelli tires for 2012
takes into account the change in the rules from the FIA regarding
blown exhausts.
The first big change for this year is
the introduction of a new profile. The tires that will be used in
2012 have a squarer profile in order to improve the wear rate:
particularly on the all-important
shoulder. The new front and rear
profiles have been designed to distribute the stresses more evenly
across the contact patch. The new rubber has been designed to provide
more grip at the rear, compensating for the reduction in aerodynamic
downforce caused by the latest rule changes introduced by the FIA.
Pirelli will introduce some entirely
new compounds for the 2012 championship, with the exception of the
supersoft, where only the profile has changed. The objective is to
reduce the performance gap between the different compounds.
Generally speaking, the 2012 tires will be softer and less
conservative than last year’s tires. The way that the teams rapidly
understood how the compounds would perform and behave already paved
the way for some more extreme solutions in the second half of 2011,
which were capable of generating increased grip.
The innovations for 2012 include both
some new names and new colors for the tires. The two wet weather
compounds will adopt the Cinturato name and comprise the full wet
tire, recognized by blue markings, and the intermediate tire, which
is denoted by green markings. The four slick compounds, which will be
continue to be called P Zero, maintain their colors from last year:
silver for the hard, white for the medium, yellow for the soft and
red for the supersoft. The tires from both the P Zero and Cinturato
ranges will be more easily recognized by the public thanks to bigger
markings on the sidewalls.
Recent Articles