Pirelli have signalled that they will take a cautious and conservative approach to their rubber compounds for the 2011 season.
This may come as bad news for the fans as the risky strategy adopted by Bridgestone this year, whereby they ran two gaps between compounds, has created some interesting strategies which have led to some very exciting races.
The move most likely comes after Pirelli’s last foray into F1 in 1991 when they supplied Benetton and Brabham. They managed to create a great qualifying tyre, however it suffered badly from degradation when it came to the race.
This is something the Italian manufacturer is looking to avoid.
“Some people like to live in the past. Of course we had this problem, but what we had developed was a very aggressive qualifying tyre,” Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery told Auto Bild.
“In the last 20 years, the rules and technologies have changed significantly.”
Pirelli currently supplies GP3 with tyres which, Hembery says will give the company confidence when choosing compounds for the European rounds of the championship, however, the overseas races are an unknown for the company.
“We know the characteristics of many of the European tracks from GP3,” he added.
“The overseas tracks are largely unknown to us. We will therefore take an accordingly conservative approach to the selection of rubber compounds.”
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