Once again, F1 and the FIA appear to be dabbling in a bid to 'spice up' the action.

Hot on the heels of the Monaco debacle, Pirelli has announced a change to the compounds at two forthcoming races in a bid to 'improve' the racing.

Usually for Silverstone, Pirelli has selected the hardest trio of compounds, but this year the decision has been taken to go one step softer, therefore the hard is the C2, the medium the C3 and the soft the C4, while at Spa-Francorchamps, two of the compounds are the same as last year, namely the C3 as medium and the C4 as soft. However, unlike in 2024 when the hard was the C2, this time it will be the C1.

Pirelli admits that the choice was decided in conjunction with the FIA and Formula 1 season and is with the aim of allowing for greater choice of race strategies, hopefully making a one-stop and two-stop equally attractive.

At Silverstone, according to the Italian manufacturer, the challenge will be to manage the medium, which for the past two years actually served as the soft, while in Spa, which is also a Sprint event, those opting for the hard, with the idea of stopping just once, will have to take into consideration the performance difference that now separates the C1 from the C2, which was last year's hard.

Speaking in Barcelona, Mario Isola shed further light on the decision.

"We have more information now compared to the first draft of the compound selection," he said. "And talking to F1 teams and drivers, and the FIA of course, it is clear we need to be a bit more aggressive or find a way to encourage teams towards a two-stop strategy.

"That was not a choice for the races where we went one step softer," he continued. "So we modified the selection. For Silverstone, we'll go one step softer with C2, C3, and C4. And we also decided to skip one level in Spa. So instead of C2, C3, and C4, we go with C1, C3, and C4. That means between C1 and C3 - the hard and the medium - you have a much bigger delta.

"If teams want to be aggressive, they have to use C3 and C4 on a two-stop. If they want to be conservative, they use C1 and C3, but that means they are slower. So, I'm curious to see if it works."

Asked why Spa was chosen in terms of 'skipping' a compound, he said: "As usual, we run simulations to try to understand how many strategies are possible with different compound selections. We found out that Belgium was the one where we had the highest number of strategies by moving to C1, C3, and C4.

"There was an initial idea to have C1, C3, and C4 also in Silverstone," he admitted. "But then we realised that with C1 and C3, probably in Silverstone you can easily complete a one-stop race without any big issue, because the C1 is working quite well there. While in Belgium, it's probably slower. And this is creating this uncertain situation."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Barcelona here.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by ARL, 17/06/2025 13:07

"I feel sorry for Pirelli in one respect as they are being pushed into providing crappy tyres to spice up races which are too often otherwise settled at the first corner. But it does seem an odd approach to marketing your products to the public.

In my experience Michelin have always made better road or race tyres than Pirelli. From memory Pirelli made better calendars when I were a lad."

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2. Posted by madmoog, 31/05/2025 9:00

"I'd prefer to see actual racing between drivers rather than this contrived situation."

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Isola explains controversial tyre choices for Silverstone and Spa

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