JUNE 29, 2011

Pirelli confirms hard compound for Silverstone

Pirelli will take its hard (silver) and soft (yellow) compound tyres to the British Grand Prix, meaning that Ferrari could struggle in its bid to continue being the closest rival to Red Bull Racing.

The Ferrari chassis seems to struggle relative to its rivals when it comes to generating heat in the harder compound tyres. Nowhere was that better illustrated than the Spanish GP at Barcelona, where Fernando Alonso led the opening segment of the race on the option tyre but ended up being lapped.

Silverstone, however, is one of the quickest tracks on the F1 calendar and demands harder compounds to cope with the sustained speeds.

It is understood that Ferrari put pressure on Pirelli to select the medium tyre for Silverstone but the Italian company has stuck with the selection announced a month ago.

Motor sport director Paul Hembery said: "Our nominations are designed to maximise the opportunities for strategy and find the right compromise between performance and durability. We are confirming the decision we took a few weeks ago, after once more consulting all the teams, and for the next two races we have arrived at what we feel to be the best solution based on the information that we have so far.

"As has been the case up to now this year, we think that there will be quite a wide variety of different strategies for the next three grands prix, but for all the races it's reasonably hard to predict how many pit stops there will be: it ultimately depends on the strategy and strengths of each individual car and team."

For the German Grand Prix at Nurburgring, Pirelli will take the medium and soft tyres, as at Valencia, and for Hungary will take the soft and supersoft, as used in Monaco and Canada.