Pirelli to introduce new compound for 2018?

As it’s the summer break, we on Vital F1 have been reassessing just where Formula One finds itself in the world right now.

We’ve looked at the costs of the sport.
We’ve looked at whether the sport is or should be a purely entertainment spectacle.
We’ve looked at the technological aspect for manufacturers.

Now we’re looking at the tyres.

Formula One has one sole tyre supplier. With all the teams provided tyres by Italian manufacturer Pirelli.

This season they have provided Formula One with more robust and durable tyres, moving away from the high degrading tyres which, whilst provided more tyre strategy and pitstops, hampered the racing as the drivers were less inclined to push and race hard.

This season the tyres, with additional downforce and mechanical grip of bigger wider tyres have provided, harder and certainly faster racing.

But overtaking remains at a premium and in the main, the tyre strategy part fo the spectacle has gone.

So what will 2018 provide?

Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola has revealed that a decision will be made by the end of the month, but one idea could be to add a sixth different compound to the options for teams.

Currently teams have hard, medium, soft, supersoft and ultrasoft.

‘My opinion is to go up to six, which is possible. Isola told motorsport.com.

‘If I look at the regulations the number of compounds is our proposal to the FIA, and usually the FIA accepts, because there is no reason to refuse. In fact this year we homologated 10 compounds ? we had the five base compounds, and five back-up compounds.

‘We don’t need the agreement of the teams. In Abu Dhabi after the race we have two days of testing with all the cars, and all the teams, which is supposed to be for validation of the new product, to give the teams the opportunity to test it in advance.

‘So end of November we need to be ready with the final version of our 2018 tyres.’