Pirelli is changing all the slick tires for the 2012 Formula One World Championship , and introducing a modified version of the wet tire.
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 of the tyre.
The new front and rear profiles have been designed to distribute the stresses more evenly across the contact patch. This modification, regularising the demands and temperatures over the entire surface of the tyre, has been designed to reduce the risk of blistering.
Pirelli will introduce some entirely new compounds, with the exception of the supersoft, where only the profile has changed.
The objective is to reduce the performance gap between the different compounds. Throughout the 2011 season there was a gap of around 1.2 seconds to 1.8 seconds per lap between the different tire nominations for each race. This year, the objective is to bring that gap down to less than a second: between six to eight tenths on average.
Generally speaking, the 2012 tires will be softer and less conservative than last year’s rubber.
The innovations for 2012 include both some new names and new colours for the tires. The two wet weather compounds will adopt the Cinturato name and comprise the full wet tire, recognised by blue markings, and the intermediate tyre, which is denoted by green markings.
The four slick compounds, which will be continue to be called P Zero, maintain their colours from last year: silver for the hard, white for the medium, yellow for the soft and red for the supersoft.
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 of the tyre.
The new front and rear profiles have been designed to distribute the stresses more evenly across the contact patch. This modification, regularising the demands and temperatures over the entire surface of the tyre, has been designed to reduce the risk of blistering.
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| Pirelli's range of F1 tires for 2012. |
Pirelli will introduce some entirely new compounds, with the exception of the supersoft, where only the profile has changed.
The objective is to reduce the performance gap between the different compounds. Throughout the 2011 season there was a gap of around 1.2 seconds to 1.8 seconds per lap between the different tire nominations for each race. This year, the objective is to bring that gap down to less than a second: between six to eight tenths on average.
Generally speaking, the 2012 tires will be softer and less conservative than last year’s rubber.
The innovations for 2012 include both some new names and new colours for the tires. The two wet weather compounds will adopt the Cinturato name and comprise the full wet tire, recognised by blue markings, and the intermediate tyre, which is denoted by green markings.
The four slick compounds, which will be continue to be called P Zero, maintain their colours from last year: silver for the hard, white for the medium, yellow for the soft and red for the supersoft.