Pirelli announces tyre compounds for first four races in 2019

Pirelli has announced the tyre compounds which will be available for the opening four rounds of the 2019 Formula One season. The new season will debut a new tyre naming convention aimed at simplifying tyre compounds for fans whilst maintaining a variety of options for teams.

In 2019, the Pirelli rainbow will be cut down to just five colours, three colours for dry compound tyres and two for wet weather tyres. Only white, yellow and red markings will be used to signify the compound during a race weekend.

The soft tyre will be marked in red, medium tyres will be yellow-walled and hard compound tyres will be white. These compounds will change from race to race depending on what Pirelli bring.

The types of compounds will vary from C1 to C5, C1 being the softest of the new range although on a race weekend they will simply be known as soft, medium or hard tyres.

Three of the opening four rounds will offer the same tyres with the Australian, Chinese and Azerbaijan Grands Prix all using C2, C3 and C4. The Bahrain Grand Prix will use C1, C2 and C3.

Teams will still be able to select their own allocations for the weekend with 13 sets of tyres being chosen for a given race weekend.