Pirelli in Melbourne expects same strategy as last year

Italian tyre manufacturer Pirelli will bring the same tyres to the first race of the season as it did last year, and therefore expects the same winning strategy on a track where asphalt abrasiveness is very low and with very little tyre wear.

For the first time since Pirelli re-entered Formula 1 in 2011, we start the season with exactly the same tyres as the previous year. And just like 2019, C2 has been chosen as the P Zero White hard tyre in Melbourne, C3 as the P Zero Yellow medium, and C4 as the P Zero Red soft.

This selection worked very well last year, which is why we’ve chosen them again. The middle of the P Zero range is well-suited to the wide-ranging demands of Melbourne, and all three compounds were used in the race.

The Albert Park circuit is a semi-permanent facility, which means that it’s often very dirty at the start of the weekend. This selection of tyres copes well with the rapid track evolution, giving drivers plenty of options when it comes to strategy.

ALBERT PARK CHARACTERISTICS

Albert Park is mainly about traction and braking, with short corners and straights apart from the long and more demanding Turn 8 by the lake.

The track is quite bumpy, which emphasizes the lack of grip.

Weather can be varied and the unforgiving confines mean that a safety car is reasonably likely. The correlation between pole position and victory is quite low.

“Tyre-wise, the drivers should be well-prepared for Melbourne, as they have exactly the same selection as last year, so there should be plenty of relevant data,” said Mario Isola from Pirelli.

“Perhaps the only question mark concerns how these tyres perform on the 2020 cars, which have already proved to be a lot faster than their predecessors, but plenty of information about this was gathered at pre-season testing in Barcelona last month.”

“In the recent past, Australia has been a one-stop race for most drivers, and for now there’s no reason to think why it should be different this year, which marks the start to the end of an era: the final season of 13-inch tyres in Formula 1.”