Formula 1 returns this weekend following a two-week layoff with the Belgian Grand Prix.
The race will feature something not seen in the sport since the 2022 season.
Pirelli, the sport’s exclusive tire supplier, confirmed the three slick tire compounds that the teams will have available at the Belgian Grand Prix. This season, Pirelli offers six different slick tire compounds (the C1, the C2, the C3, the C4, the C5, and the new C6), ranging from hardest to softest. Pirelli designates one tire as the hard, one as the medium, and the other as the soft.
For example, at the British Grand Prix a few weeks ago, the C2 was the hard tire, the C3 was the medium, and the C4 was the soft tire. At the Austrian Grand Prix, however, the C3 was designated as the hard, the C4 as the medium, and the C5 as the soft.
At the Belgian Grand Prix this weekend, however, the three tire options will be non-consecutive. Pirelli confirmed on Monday that the C1 — the hardest tire in Pirelli’s range — will be the hard tire, but then the C3 will be the medium, and the C4 will serve as the soft.
This is the first time since the Australian Grand Prix in 2022 that the three tire options are non-consecutive. At that race, the C2 was the hard, the C4 was the medium, and the C5 was the soft.
Pirelli believes that this selection will make a two-stop strategy the favorable approach. Last year, the C2 tire was designated as the hard compound, with the C3 serving as the medium and the C4 as the soft. George Russell crossed the finish line in P1 after executing a daring one-stop strategy, pitting on Lap 10 for a set of C2 hard tires and making those last until the end of the race.
However, Russell’s win was short-lived, as he was disqualified following a post-race inspection that showed that his car was underweight. That strategy may have played a role in that disqualification for two reasons.
First, running double the amount of laps the team expected him to run on that set of hard tires meant there was excessive wear and increased lost rubber. Second, given the size of the lap at Spa, there is no cooldown lap. Drivers simply turn back into the pit lane at the exit of Turn 1 after finishing the race.
That meant that Russell could not pick up extra rubber on the cooldown lap to help his car make the minimum required weight.
Now, Pirelli has offered a different range of compounds for the Belgian Grand Prix, including something not seen in the sport since 2022.
