Pirelli is preparing C5 tires for the race for the first time this season

The debut of C5, the softest of the whole line of compounds that Pirelli tire makers are bringing to the championship stages this year, coincides with the Australian Grand Prix. During the race weekend at Albert Park in Melbourne, the teams will also have the C4 (used in Saudi Arabia) and C3 tires, which Pirelli prepares for almost every race.

Last year the teams in Melbourne worked with harder tires: they were C2, C3 and C4. However, in 2022, Italian tire makers already brought the C5 to Albert Park, but in a different combination, because C3 tires acted as Medium rubber and C2 tires were the heaviest.

The decision to shift the selection to the softer end of the composition spectrum was made after analyzing the events of last year’s Australian Grand Prix, when ten drivers completed 47 of the 58 laps of the course on C2 tires and three drivers in were able to last more than 50 laps without changing tires. But that race was interrupted more than once by the appearance of the safety car and red flags; The restart was given twice from a standstill and once from a moving start.

In the past, the distance of this race could usually be overcome with one pit stop, but the transition to softer rubber compounds may require adjustments to the usual tactics. It is also possible to expect situations where the difference in speed between cars will be more noticeable, because the degree of tire wear will be different, which can facilitate overtaking. Although there are usually few of them in Albert Park.

The composition of the C5 is the same as last year, but the softest rubber on cars of this generation has been the least used so far. At the pre-season testing in Bahrain, the teams only drove 140 km on such tires, while Lewis Hamilton was the only one to complete a fairly long series of laps on them.

Williams mainly used the C5 to get out of the pits and almost immediately back into the pit lane, and only two other teams, Ferrari and Sauber, paid more attention to working with this rubber. Still, it is not well suited to the abrasive asphalt of the Sakhir circuit, so teams and drivers will have to discover the characteristics of such tires in Australia.

In Albert Park the road surface properties are different; the tires do not wear very intensively there and are more likely to be subject to degradation than to mechanical wear. However, it is now the beginning of autumn in Australia, so it cannot be excluded that the weather may bring surprises, temperature fluctuations will be quite noticeable and rain is also possible – in the past it has accompanied the weekend in Melbourne more than once .

The program includes numerous preliminary races, not only Formula 3 and Formula 2, but also stages of the local Porsche Cup and Australia’s popular Supercars touring car series. You can therefore assume that the track surface is covered with a layer of waste rubber and can provide good grip.