Pirelli change tyre markings for 2012

Pirelli the sole tyre supplier for Formula 1, have tweaked the colours of their tyre compounds to make them stand out more for viewers.

The dry tyres are staying the same colour but the colours will be brighter and more saturated to make them stand out and be easily recognised by the viewing public. The wet and intermediate tyre compounds however will have a different colour gracing their sidewall. The Intermediate tyre used in damp conditions will now be a lime green, instead of 2011's light blue, with the Full Wet tyre now being blue when they were once orange.

Pirelli also reveal that the 2012 tyres will be alot softer than last year. They are targeted more at the degradation from the first few 2011 races. In 2011 the first few races saw the tyres degrade and change constantly but by the end of the season the pit stop numbers went down and the tyres were more reliable.

Paul Hembrey told F1 Times "For 2012 we will have some new compounds and also a new profile for the tyres: the idea is to reduce the performance gap between the compounds in order to make the racing even closer,"

"Generally speaking, all the compounds are softer. The 2012 hard tyre is much closer to last year's medium compound. These are some of the quickest tyres that we have ever produced and they are definitely more biased towards performance. In spite of that, the degradation rate has actually been improved, and we’re still aiming to see between two and three pit stops at every race. The gaps between the compounds are also much closer, which should lead to some interesting race strategies."

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