Pirelli chooses what three tire compounds are brought to each Grand Prix. They’re always called “Soft”, “Medium”, and “Hard”—but they’re not always the same tire. Pirelli numbers them C1 (hardest) to C5 (softest) and chooses three of those for each race.
For Round 1 in Bahrain, the tires will be the three hardest Pirelli has (C1-C3). Those are even harder than what was used in Bahrain last year, so normally we’d say that tires will last longer than last year and make for some good attacking in the late laps. But with 2022 cars, who knows?
The most interesting thing about Pirelli’s tire selections is what they decided to do for the Australian Grand Prix in Round 3.
After Russia’s invastion of Ukraine, Haas was quick to make changes. Frankly, much quicker than we expected. The day after the invasion began, the Uralkali branding and Russian flag motif were gone. And then a few days later, so was Nikita Mazepin.
That was quicker than the Haas has been in five years, and commendable, but it’s two weeks before the first race–and just days before the next test–and they technically don’t have a second driver…yet.
Look, we don’t see any reason why a team would make a change in the seven days between test and GP…but we don’t own a team. And it’s not as if Haas never did anything to make us scratch our heads.
It seems like the “American” team has decided who will get the seat…at least for this weekend’s test in Bahrain.
Alex Albon was pretty happy with how Williams tested in Barcelona, but says it’s pretty clear to him that Barcelona’s track characteristics keep him (and the teams themselves) from knowing a car’s true performance.
Honestly, we’re here for any besmirching of the track in Barcelona, since we’ve never seen it produce a good race in the Drive to Survive era. Decide for yourself, but I read his comments as a version of “track characteristics have always impacted teams’ setups and result, but there are a few specific tracks that will throw the grid into a mess.”