Pirelli unveils tyre choices for 2021 F1 season

Pirelli has announced its compound choices for the 2021 Formula 1 season, with its selection broadly in line with last year's approach

While in the past Pirelli has decided on its tyre choices a few weeks in advance of races, it has elected to plan out the entire campaign for 2021 because of ongoing complications caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Pirelli's head of F1 and car racing Mario Isola said: "Announcing all the selections for the year right now will help the teams and the drivers with their planning, also allowing for maximum flexibility just in case the calendar has to change due to Covid-19 restrictions, as we saw last year."

While Pirelli brings a soft, medium and hard to every race, the actual compound selection does vary track to track.

For 2021, the compounds are pretty much aligned with what's been used in the past - although softer rubber will be taken to Baku and Brazil.

Isola added: "The selections themselves are on the whole similar to last year (or 2019, in the case of races not run in 2020), which means that teams should have plenty of data to fall back on - but we have two races where the nominations are softer.

"The first is Azerbaijan, where our C2 hard tyre wasn't used last time, so we are now going with the softest selection of all: C3, C4 and C5.

"Then we have Brazil, where we will take the C2, C3 and C4 this year, as the C1 that was selected as the hardest choice last time didn't show a particularly big advantage in terms of wear over the medium.

"In both cases, the softer nomination could lead to a greater variety of race strategies".

With F1 continuing to use different protocols because of covid, the forthcoming campaign will be another one where every driver is given the same allocation of tyre sets each weekend.

Previously, teams could nominate a varied selection for their drivers depending on how aggressive or conservative they wanted to be.

Just like last year though drivers will all have the same sets available at the start of the weekend, which will be two hards, three mediums and eight softs.

While the selections have been laid out now, there is scope within the regulations for the choices to be changed in exceptional circumstances up to 15 days before an event starts.