No new tires for the race in Canada
While new tires were supposed to be introduced for the Canadian Grand Prix, Pirelli eventually announced that these new compounds would only be available for Friday's free practice sessions and not for the rest of the weekend.
A few days ago, Pirelli announced that new tires would be available for the teams in Montreal but finally, due to the reluctance shown by some of them and also, it seems, due to the controversy over the tests conducted by Mercedes, the Italian manufacturer backtracked.
If new tires will indeed be available for the teams in Montreal, they will only be for Friday’s free practice sessions and not for the rest of the weekend – qualifying and race in particular. This was announced by Pirelli in a press release: « The Formula 1 teams will have the opportunity to test the new range of Pirelli P Zero tires during the free practice sessions of the Canadian Grand Prix. For qualifying and the race, however, the lineup offered remains the same as the original specification. To provide a testing period before introducing any new tire product range, the P Zero White medium tire and the P Zero Red supersoft tire will be exactly the same as those with which the teams started the season, without any modification. The new tire brought to Canada will be an experimental compound, available only during free practice, as allowed by the current regulations. Each driver will have two sets of this new medium compound available for Friday’s two sessions only. »
However, Pirelli does not abandon the idea of definitively offering these tires to the teams if the tests are conclusive: « After obtaining the evaluations from the teams and drivers, the desire is to introduce the new tire specification starting from the British Grand Prix at the end of June, and to maintain it until the end of the season. »
The manufacturer based in Milan also reminded that these new tires would not change radically, with the main goal being to improve the reliability of the tires: « The objective, through the introduction of a new tire, is to avoid any possibility of “detachment” of the tread from the tire structure. However, the performance and wear characteristics of the new tire will not be significantly different, with the aim remaining to maintain the spectacle and strategic aspect of the races. »
