Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri, Yas Marina, 2021

F1 teams not seeking to reintroduce tyre allocation choices – Pirelli

2022 F1 season

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Formula 1 teams will not have the opportunity to choose their tyre allocations for a third year in 2022 having shown no interest in reintroducing the rule which was suspended due to the pandemic.

Until the end of 2019 teams were able to choose how many sets they wanted of the compounds Pirelli nominated for each race. This rule was dropped in 2020, when the championship was disrupted by the pandemic, in order to allow races to be organised and held as quickly as possibly when the season restarted. “We had to find a solution for the pandemic to be quicker in reaction,” noted Pirelli’s head of motorsport, Mario Isola.

But while F1’s schedule has returned almost to normal in 2022, teams will still not have the opportunity to customise their tyre selections this year. Isola said there had been no appetite from the teams to bring the rule back.

“The teams came back to us saying actually the system is quite good, we want to keep it for the future,” he explained in response to a question from RaceFans. “So it was not our decision at the end to continue with this fixed allocation.

“The teams told us that if they have a fixed allocation and it’s the same for everybody so there is no advantage for one or the other, they can start planning on this fixed allocation instead of spending time and resources and people to think about one set more of medium or one set less of soft. They have that allocation, they have to work around this.”

The switch to an entirely new 18-inch tyre size for 2022 also discouraged teams from seeking control over their tyre allocations this year, said Isola.

“In 2020 they said we want to continue for 2021. In 2021, with the new product for 2022, nobody was confident in deciding their compounds and breakdown and so they want to continue.

“I don’t know if 2023 they want to change but for the moment this is the answer.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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9 comments on “F1 teams not seeking to reintroduce tyre allocation choices – Pirelli”

  1. Good. The current method works well.

    1. Yeah. There really was only detail difference between the teams in who chose how many of which compound anyway. Mercedes often had a a set more of the hard or mediums compared to Red Bull. Or the teams picked one or two sets difference between their drivers and then had both do a slightly different program in the friday sessions.

      Especially since nobody really knows anyhow how the new tyres will exactly behave with the new cars they can just as well have Pirelli use their own know how to pick a set that will suit everyone.

      1. Works well enough and that it is not the first point to address regarding tyres.
        I would rather see that we scrap the Q3 drivers have to start on quali tyres first which effectively only penalize the best of the midfield.
        And I wouldn’t be against removing the requirement for teams to run 2 different type of tyres but keep requirement that at least one pit stop should be performed during a race. That might actually open more variation and possibility for teams to use the tyre that suits them best.

        1. Didn’t they scrap that one (drivers who get into Q3 having to start on their Q2 tyres) with the 2022 regulations already @jeanrien?

          1. @bascb Couldn’t find confirmation of that, it was under consideration though and hope it will happen. Latest news I could find dates from Nov 2021 and wasn’t final but I might have missed it.

  2. Good idea had the teams had true free choice but they could only choose the number of sets within a set range. ultimately with enough practice sessions teams converged on allocation.
    The rule was just a distraction.

    1. @peartree Agree, I have always been an advocate of giving the teams more choice over tyre compounds (in an ideal world I’d go even further and allow multiple manufacturers, but I accept that is unlikely in this budget-capped era), but the way it was implemented did not allow for sufficient variation to make it interesting.

      Get rid of the two-compound rule and give the teams completely free choice over which of the five compounds they’d like to bring to each race. But maybe not in the first year of a completely new wheel profile, as that would maybe be too much of a lottery.

  3. Given the fact that their data on them is very limited at the moment and that some allocations would have needed to have done by now, this makes sense at least initially.

    However you do run the risk of some teams lobbying for certain specs if there is a clear performance differentiator. This is where the choice evened this out.

  4. It generally didn’t make a huge difference anyway, since usually, it was a small allocation difference at most and it would usually converge after practice.

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