Pirelli to introduce super-soft tyres in Monaco

2011 F1 season

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Felipe Massa, Ferrari, Shanghai, 2011

Pirelli will bring its super-soft tyres to an F1 race for the first time in the Monaco Grand Prix.

F1’s official tyre supplier has confirmed its choice of compounds for the next three races.

Teams will continue to use the hard and soft tyres, seen in all races so far this year, for the next two rounds. This mirrors the tyre choices brought by Bridgestone to these races last year.

In Monaco they will have Pirelli’s two softest compounds: soft and super-soft. The medium tyre has not yet been used in a race weekend.

RacePrimeOption
Turkish Grand PrixHardSoft
Spanish Grand PrixHardSoft
Monaco Grand PrixSoftSuper-soft

2011 F1 season


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Image © Pirelli

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Keith Collantine
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35 comments on “Pirelli to introduce super-soft tyres in Monaco”

  1. sorry if i’m being thick but won’t a move from having hard and soft, to, soft and super soft mean the tyres last even less time and even more stops? or will they be allowed hards as well?

    1. Tyre wear is much lower at Monaco.

      1. I thought the rears got eaten up by all the traction events? Didn’t the tyres only last about 10 laps in ’09?

        1. No, otherwise they’d’ve been making seven stops each!

          1. Eh true, here’s what you had to say at the time

            The Monaco Grand Prix was all about tyres: super-soft tyres, to be exact.

            Button mastered them, Vettel went to pieces on them, and Williams screwed up their strategy because they were spooked by them.

            2010 was pretty boring in terms of tyres though, I guess we wont know how the pirellis will hold up until we get there

          2. Yeah in 2010 we were still talking about racing instead of tyres. How boring.

    2. Cars aren’t particularly fast there, no big fast corners and the race is ‘just’ 262km long, so I guess it’ll do.

    3. Considering that’s really the only way to get past in Monaco, this is no bad thing.

      1. when tyres go bad in monaco they go really bad.

        remember the renaults in 05.

  2. I wouldn’t be that surprised to see Medium and Hard used at Canada, though I think they should mix it up a bit, bring a super soft and a hard to a race or two

    1. Already degradation is higher with Pirellis, if they bring their softest compounds we will see 8 stops per car!

    2. they could use their ‘extra hard’ development tyre…?

    3. That would be fun, bring some real strategy back into it, instead of Soft, Soft, Soft, Hard. Give them a choice between Super-Soft, Super-Soft, Super-Soft, Hard, Hard, or Super-Soft, Hard, Hard

  3. really looking forward to monaco this year…

  4. Excellent. Looking forward to seeing the old knife and butter get replaced with the jam and bread.

    1. Make that jam and butter (doesn’t quite work…)

      1. I hope they’re developing a scone and cream…

        1. With raspberry jam on top. Always cream first, of course ;)

  5. Monaco qualifying is going to be sensational with the super-soft tyres, I think we’ll see some scorching lap times.

  6. Shouldn’t there be another compound between the ones selected for race weekend?

    I mean hard and soft has medium in between them, but how will they use soft and super-softs? Shouldn’t it be medium and super-softs?

    1. That’s what I thought too. I thought they were doing the same thing as bridgestone, keeping a compound between tyre choice.

      1. At Monaco and Hungary its normally super soft and soft anyway.

        1. Bridgestone brought supersofts and mediums to those two races last year.

          http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2010/9/11213.html

        2. I guess Pirelli is going the 2009 route that Bridgestone followed with the soft and supersofts.

          1. It’s a bit of a head scratcher. You have the gap in tyres to create different strategies something pirelli have openly admitted they’re trying to influence. Bringing soft and super soft to monaco though is almost like giving up on that philosophy for a race. Almost all teams will have the same strategy because there will not be enough of a difference in the tyres to really be played with.

  7. Bigbadderboom
    16th April 2011, 13:46

    Does anybody know if the compound directly effects the rate of degredation. I know that obviously the softer the compound the shorter the performance window of the tyre, but in terms of the tyre becoming ineffecient, is the drop off even steeper on a super soft?. The reason I ask is that if they drop off even faster than the softs is their a potential for more barrier incidents at Monaco this year. Nico Rosberg gave a great insight with his engineer Jock on BBC before quali when they discussed the micro management of tyres and their performance properties changing literally between corners. And DC commented that sometimes judging braking distances is just good guess work when conditions change! I suspect there will be some crossed fingers on the pit walls as the drivers come out of the tunnel at Monaco when tyres go off!!!

    1. I doubt it will be any greater. If the Softs last 10 laps in Malaysia the Super-Softs will last 10 laps in Monaco, at least, that’s how I think it roughly goes. Similarly if the former drop off at 1s per lap per lap (if that makes sense), so would the latter (roughly speaking)

      1. Bigbadderboom
        16th April 2011, 13:57

        Yeah i see what you mean in terms of lap performance, But Nico was saying that the tyre properties changed very quickly/dramatically between corners. I was thinking that perhaps this would be faster with super softs and less predictable by for the driver.

  8. Spain and Turkey is quite conservative and Monaco is…insane. I cannot wait for it!! btw, where’s on earth medium?

    1. Montreal? Anything less could be ridiculous!

  9. Barcelona should definitely have Super Soft and Medium because the other two compounds are more likely to make it one of the most BORING of the year as usual!

  10. I can`t wait to see the supersoft in action. Do most circuits have their own snowplough ?

  11. When will they introduce medium & super-soft together.

  12. Er… didn’t Pirelli say earlier in the year that they would only bring compounds that were more than one step between each other? i.e. it’s hard/soft or hard/super soft or medium/super soft?

    1. I guess with Monaco being very mild on the tyres would make the mediums too durable and maybe to slow in Monaco to make it work.

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