Article by Finley Ever
There are many parts that make up the skeleton and outer parts of a Formula 1 car, but the fast piece of machinery can’t move if it doesn’t have tyres! There is a numerous amount with specific rules so let’s go through them!
F1 Tyres
First and foremost, the official tyre provider for F1 is the Italian Pirelli, who has been manufacturing tyres for F1 since the sport’s debut in 1950.
For the 2026 season, there are five compounds ranging from hardest to softest. The C1, C2, C3, C4, and C5. Then there are the intermediates and full wet tyres for rainy or damp weather conditions.
For each Grand Prix, Pirelli picks three compounds for the teams to use based on the track and weather conditions on that given weekend.
Working our way backwards, we have the softest compound, the C5, first. This tyre is coloured red.
The C4 is the second softest, while it isn’t indicated by a certain colour like the other tyres, it’s softer than the rest but harder than the C5.
The C3 is the medium tyre and if marked by it’s yellow rim!
C2 is the hard tyre, and you’ll be able to spot this one on track with its white coloured pattern!
C1 is the hardest Tyre out there! It has maximum durability and slower degradation, but lower grip on track.
To sum this all up, the softest tyre, the C5, offers the most grip on track but degrades a lot quicker. It’s easy to fire up, but can’t go too long of a distance before being worn down. The softer tyres are good for short bursts of speed such as qualifying sessions.
The hard tyre or the C1’s and 2’s are the exact opposite! Less grip but great for longevity out on track, such as an actual race.
The medium is the perfect balance between the softs and hards, so the hards and mediums are typically the tyres teams tend to use on race day.
On a usual Grand Prix weekend, excluding those featuring Sprint Races, each driver is allotted 13 sets of dry weather tyres, five sets of the intermediates, and two sets of the wet tyres. Another pair of soft tyres is also given to the drivers who make it to Q3 in qualifying, and from this article you can confidently say that the reason for using the softs is because Q3 is a short amount of time out of track, which is perfect for the soft tyres! At least two sets of tyres need to be used during a race, as well.
Then during a sprint race format weekends, the drivers get 12 sets of dry weather tyres instead of 13, as well as six intermediates and 2 wets. F1 reduces the amount of dry weather tyres during the sprint weekends to force the teams to plan more strategically and carefully with their tyre strategies.
The rules and allocations of tyres is a whole bunch of information, but hopefully you’ll leave this page feeling a little more confident in your knowledge of everything F1 tyres.
Happy race day!
xx
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