Pirelli announces colour coding for F1 tyres!

Pirelli's colour coded F1 tyres are going to be easy to recognise!

Formula 1 is one of the most watched sports on television around the world and that figure is constantly growing. No question then, that one of the major areas for concern is how to visually distinguish between various settings on different cars for the people sitting and watching a race not only on television, but also in the grandstands. As far as tyres are concerned, Bridgestone distinguished between the Prime and Option tyres with the help of a green band running circumferencially on the tyre’s side wall. But that again just distinguished between Prime and Option tyres regardless of whether they were wet soft, hard or medium compound ones.

With Pirelli entering Formula 1 as the sole tyre supplier to the sport in a three-year contract that begins with the 2011 season, all that is about to change. The Italian tyre manufacturer has unveiled a unique colour coding system for all the compounds that they have developed for the 2011 season – super soft, soft, medium, hard and even for the wet and intermediate tyres. The Pirelli and P-Zero logos will appear in the varying colours depending on what tyre they are on. The coding is as follows:

Wet – Orange

Intermediate – Light Blue

Super soft – Red

Soft – Yellow

Medium – White

Hard – Silver

All the colours are distinctly different from each other and will be easily distinguishable when the cars are out on track. Meanwhile, Pirelli has also announced that they will keep a step of atleast one compound between the set Prime and Option tyres for each race – though this may change based on actual observations at the track in the first few races.