Back when the International Automobile Federation (FIA) asked former F1 sole supplier Bridgestone to differentiate the appearance of the soft and hard compounds, the Japanese company chose to paint a line in a middle groove of the soft options. The next season, when slicks came into play once again, Bridgestone marked the soft compound with a green circle on the sidewall.
For 2011, all F1 tires will have the words “Pirelli P Zero” written on the sidewall, but the color of the writing will change based on the compound, as follows: the super-soft wording will reportedly be in red, the soft will be in white, the medium in blue and the hard in yellow.
In addition to that, the full wet and intermediate tires will also feature different colors, with the former having the “Pirelli P Zero” mark painted in yellow and the latter in red.
According to a report from the GMM news agency, the FIA will distribute Pirelli's tires to the teams after randomly shuffling the code numbers at grands prix, just so that favoritism claims will not be issued.
Pirelli has recently ended its last testing session prior to the first official group test of the winter in Valencia, as Pedro de la Rosa drove the TF109 test car in Abu Dhabi in wet conditions, at night. After evaluating the behavior of Pirelli's wet and intermediate compounds, the marque's research and development boss Maurizio Boiocci admitted he is yet to find out how the additional speed ensured by the introduction of KERS and adjustable rear wings will affect the tires.
“If the speed came on gradually, for sure there would be no problems. But it remains to be seen what happens when all the power comes on suddenly,” said Boiocci.
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