Mario Isola: The Hard Squad played a leading role in the race

The head of the Pirelli racing division, Mario Isola, summed up the Australian Grand Prix and assessed the effectiveness of the C2, C3 and C4 rubber compounds that the tire manufacturers brought to the Albert Park circuit.

Mario Isol: “We saw an eventful Australian Grand Prix with three red flags, a real and a virtual safety car. All these developments had a direct impact on the strategies, with all rubber compounds performing as expected and hard tires playing a leading role.

When the safety car first came out after Alex Albon’s departure on lap seven, some riders who had started on Medium switched to Hard. But once the red flags appeared, others followed.

Although the teams had little information on the performance of the tires over long distances, with only a few riders completing more than ten laps in a row during practice, the C2 tires proved to be very stable in terms of degradation and did not differ much in speed of other compounds.

The fact that we saw all three line-ups on the grid confirms the correctness of the decision to bring the C4 line-up to Melbourne this year, which proved to be suitable for race use and became the most important in the last laps thanks to two red flags.

Soft and Medium showed good speed, albeit on relatively short stretches, but with higher temperatures than the previous days and on a more rubberized track.”