Daniel Ricciardo wants Pirelli to offer their pink tyre – the hypersoft in every grand prix for the rest of the season.
The softest compound in Pirelli’s stable will be seen at next week’s Monaco Grand Prix. But the Aussie wants to see it in more races as he believes it will add more uncertainty to racing.
“I don’t know why we can’t have the hypersoft at every race,” he said. “Or at least we qualify on it and maybe figure it out after that.
“But at least we’ve got, like, a qualifying tyre and then bigger differences in the race to create a bit more opportunity.
“Because as I say, for the top six it was already obvious from Friday [in Barcelona] we were going to qualify on the soft and try to do a one-stop with the medium. That’s no secret.
“I think that’s what it is – just trying to create more options, more surprises because it’s a bit predictable for now.”
The Australian is one of the first drivers to show the irritation due to a lack of significant differentiation between the compounds.
Pirelli’s 2018 tyres are all one step softer than the last year’s offering. But at the Spanish Grand Prix, the delta between the soft and supersoft tyres was shown to be just 0.3 seconds.
It was also hard for many cars to manage the temperature of supersofts across laps. Circuit de Catalunya puts a lot of stress on the front left for most cars, making it harder to manage the tyres.
Due to the minute difference between the softs and supersofts, most of the top 10 cars decided to go with softs for the qualifying race.
Romain Grosjean does not like the Supersofts.
“It is rubbish,” he said. “It’s not correct that we go faster on soft.
“It just shows that it’s not exactly what it should be. The super should go faster – obviously, you expect more degradation, which you have, but it is just a harder tyre to drive.
“You don’t have much rear support in the car, and it is more pointy, you can’t push as hard as you would like, so we’ve talked to Pirelli at the drivers’ meeting. We need to keep all the work going because there is some more work to be done.
“I don’t want to be negative, I just think that we can all together work on a better tyre.”
Pirelli is not opposed to the idea of skipping a compound in its offering. In China, they offered the medium, soft and ultrasofts.
“I had a chat with the drivers and it was quite interesting,” said Pirelli’s Mario Isola. “They had a lot of ideas for the future.
“An interesting proposal, because they were happy with the tyre choice in China, and sometimes the difference between soft and medium is less than one second, was to consider jumping levels. Say hard, soft, ultrasoft.
“We can make a simulation of this to understand the possible effects. We have six compounds in the range so we have the flexibility to jump a level as we did in China.
“But it’s possible in these conditions that you have the hypersoft as a qualifying tyre, and under the current regulations, they are obliged to use it in the race. It’s not easy. You have to consider all the possibilities.”
