tires

[glacial perch]

What are the different tires used for. Like soft, hard, medium etc

[worthy flax]

coco#3840, Successfully banished R3HXN#1463 from f1-beginner-questions.

[last minnow]

there's a whole bunch of more in depth information on it available if you head to google, but the basic premise is:

to make it more entertaining and add a layer of strategy.

Pirelli make the tires for F1 specifically to add complexity and strategy by making different tires have different amounts of grip, but the ones that are grippier (and therefore faster) will wear out faster, leading the cars to need to decide how much of each race to spend on any given compound.

Should you start on hard tires, strong enough to handle the full weight of the car with fuel until 3/4 of the way through the race, then snag softs at the end with low fuel to be zoomy?

or maybe the reverse? use softs early to get ahead of the other cars, build a gap, then pit later on to switch to mediums/hards to last to the end of the race before they wear out hoping your early advantage will carry you the rest of the way?

per the rules you HAVE to use 2 different compounds during a race (barring wet weather) so which tires and when becomes a whole layer of strategy that allows teams to try to gain advantages by knowing exactly how to get the best out of the tires and car

if you want to know more would be glad to go on about it, google also has lots of great articles, so I tried to focus this answer on the "why?" instead of all the "how?"

he's not even in the server anymore... RIP... hope it helps someone

[forest remnant]

I enjoyed your answer fwiw 😂

[pine blade]

Pirelli make the tires for F1 specifically to add complexity and strategy by making different tires have different amounts of grip
this makes it sound like they do it artificially (like they could make durable softs but purposefully choose not to), is this true?

[last minnow]

yes, they could easily make a grippy tire that lasts all race, that would be faster than the current hardest compounds.

they are put in the difficult engineering position of making tires that perform at a certain race pace, but fail slowly and at a predictable rate

just to add layers to strategy and spectacle.

[pine blade]

for the "pinnacle of motorsport" it seems a bit weird to me that tires are artificially limited like that but I guess it does make for a better show

[devout moth]

Read the pinned please