Pirelli has made a departure from its recent tyre selection approach this weekend in the hope of creating more varied strategies at the Australian Grand Prix.
In recent years Formula 1’s official tyre supplier has invariably selected consecutive compounds for each race. However it has brought the C2, C3 and C5 rubber to Melbourne, skipping the C4, which was the softest tyre used at the last round in Jeddah.
Pirelli’s head of motorsport Mario Isola said the manufacturer wanted to create a larger gap in performance between the medium and soft compound tyres.
“During our tyre test we found that the delta lap time between the C3 and the C4 was quite small,” Isola explained. Pirelli expected between 0.4 and 0.5 seconds difference per lap between the two around Jeddah’s 6.174-kilometre track.
Around the shorter Albert Park course, Isola said Pirelli expect the difference to be “less than 0.3” of a second. “So we decided to jump one level, that is always possible, and bring to…