Pirelli announces tyre compounds for Austrian Grand Prix amidst high temperature forecasts

The Austrian Grand Prix is set to take place in Spielberg on Friday, 27 June - Sunday June 29th. The current weather forecast is predicting temperatures into the high 20s. With that, Pirelli has selected to run the CS as its hard tyre, C4 as the medium and C5 as the soft tyre compound.

While Pirelli says in its Austrian Grand Prix press release, “wear is not a key factor” and “the track is not very severe in terms of the lateral forces exerted on the tyres,”, it also admits, “degradation is mainly thermal in origin, which is down to the track layout with several hard braking and acceleration points. Managing tyre overheating, particularly on the rear axle, is a significant challenge.”

Last year, the most popular strategy was a two-stop strategy, which means we could see the same this year. According to Pirelli, 53% of laps were completed using hard tyres. The rest of the laps were completed with either the C4 medium or the soft compounds.

It is noteworthy that the running of the C5 accounts for roughly 1% of the laps in the 2024 Austrian Grand Prix. Along with that, only 3% of the stints were completed with the C5.

Pirelli forsee the track being weathered in for Formula 1 saying, "The venue gets plenty of use, with racing on both four and two wheels, therefore the track is pretty well rubbered-in right from the start of the weekend. Early summer can bring high temperatures, but the Styrian mountain location and surrounding forests often cause rapid changes in the weather with rain clouds building up quickly."