Pirelli announces tyre choices for Japan and Korea

Pirelli, the exclusive tyre supplier to Formula One for the three-year period from 2011-2013, has revealed the compound nominations for the grands prix in Japan and Korea next month.

The P Zero White medium tyre and P Zero Yellow soft tyres will be used in Japan. For Korea, just one week later, the P Zero Yellow soft and P Zero Red Supersoft have been nominated.

The Suzuka circuit, which hosts the Japanese Grand Prix, contains a wide variety of fast and medium speed corners, such as the famous Spoon Curve and 130R. This makes it ideal territory for the versatile P Zero White tyre, with the P Zero Yellow tyre – which has been used at every race so far this year – as the option.

Korea, inaugurated last year, is a tighter and twistier circuit with low grip. Because of this, the P Zero Yellow soft and P Zero Red supersoft tyres have been nominated: the same combination used for Monaco, Canada, Hungary and Singapore.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “After careful analysis of all the data we have available, we have come up with what we believe to be the nominations that are best suited to the characteristics of each circuit. While Suzuka is a track that we’ve competed on before, both in GT racing and on motorbikes, Korea is a circuit that most people are still learning about. Nonetheless, we benefit from advanced simulation technology that allows us to accurately predict the likely behaviour of each tyre even on tracks that we have never seen before. The extra performance of the supersoft makes it one of the most dynamic tyres in our range, which will form a key part of the strategy in Korea. Before then, the combination of medium and soft that will be used in Japan was last seen on our home grand prix in Italy, resulting in an extremely exciting race.”