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Pirelli name first compounds for opening races - Tyre choices, as Paul Hembery feels happy with their compounds

Published by Christine

Pirelli name first compounds for opening races
Credit: Pirelli S.p.A.
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Welcome to F1Minute - Pirelli name first compounds for opening races.

Pirelli have announced their tyre compound choices for the first three rounds of the 2012 season, with Australia kicking things off using the soft and mediums. The second race in Malaysia will be medium and hards, whilst the racing in China will go back to the same choice as Melbourne - soft and mediums.

The compounds are just one step apart, which differs from last year, where all three events used the hard and soft compound - two steps apart.

Following their first round of testing in Jerez, Pirelli’s motorsport boss Paul Hembery was happy with how the new rubber was performing. He said: “We know the warm-up is better on the medium and hard tyres, which was a criticism we had last year - getting the tyres into the right temperature, particularly for some of the cars in the mid grid who had less downforce.”

Talking about the tyres as a whole, he added: “The drivers are all generally talking about having the cars well balanced, and I think part of that is the fact they’ve been able to understand the tyres better... The overall feedback has been very positive.”