25/05/2018
NEWS STORY
Once upon a time those round black circles of rubber at each corner of the car were called tyres.
Over the years we've had wet and dry, then slicks, inters, full wets and Monsoon.
We've had prime and option, only to morph into hard, medium and soft, thence supersoft, ultrasoft and hypersoft, not forgetting superhard, or brutal as we like to call them.
It was all getting a bit ridiculous.
Now Pirelli has been officially requested to do away with the various names and come up with a more simple solution.
"We've had a request from FOM and FIA to just call them hard, medium and soft," the Italian manufacturer's head of car racing (a somewhat silly title in itself) Mario Isola told reporters.
"With three colours, the same colours and same names for all the races," he continued, "but obviously different compounds, because you cannot use the same compounds in Silverstone or Monaco.
"On a second level we will have compound A, B, C, D, E, F or whatever, and we will tell you that for this race, the hard is B, the medium is D, and whatever. So for spectators it's probably more understandable, but you also have the possibility to go deeper in detail for technical information that we will continue to provide. It's an ongoing discussion, but we said we are available to evaluate this change."
At the same time, while the various names are dropped, so too will the ever-increasing rainbow of colours that help identify them.
"I made a check with production and logistics, obviously we need to understand all the implications," said Isola. "We produce a specific batch for each race, to be sure that they all come from the same batch, so honestly to put a purple label or a yellow label or any other colour is not a big issue."