Pirelli agrees to drop hardest tyre compounds

Pirelli has confirmed reports it will drop the hardest tyre compounds from its selection for July’s British grand prix.

Following recent controversy, the drivers lobbied F1’s official supplier to drop the hard compounds for Silverstone.

Pirelli has agreed.

"This is an experiment," the Italian marque’s F1 chief Mario Isola told Auto Motor und Sport.

"We are being quite aggressive so I cannot say whether we will continue like that in the second half of the season. We will have to wait for the results," he said.

But many teams and drivers think Pirelli’s 2017 tyres are too conservative across the range, especially at Monaco where even the soft tyres are too ’hard’.

"Actually we need a special, extremely soft tyre for here," Isola admitted. "Here, even on the ultrasoft tyres you could do a complete race distance without any significant wear.

"It would not be a problem to develop such a tyre, but unfortunately we have no way to test them. Taking it to Barcelona would be quite pointless," he said.