Michelin have not been involved in Formula 1 for over 16 years, and some bold comments from the tyre manufacturer’s CEO earlier this week suggested that is not about to change.
Florent Menegaux was frank in his assessment of Formula 1 and the FIA’s invitation to tender for the exclusive tyre supplier rights to the world championship, currently opened for the 2025-27 F1, F2 and F3 seasons. Dismissing the FIA’s insistence that F1’s tyre supplier make compounds that continue to feature a ‘cliff’ where performance drops off exponentially, Menegaux said Michelin had no interest in making tyres that “destroy themselves”.
F1’s unique tyre philosophy over the last decade has separated it from virtually all other international racing series. No other championship makes tyres which degrade rapidly a central focus of its racing.
Some regard high-deg tyres as critical to generating intrigue and strategy variance in a series where refuelling is banned. Others wince at the idea that drivers should prioritise managing their rubber during a race to maximise their performance, rather than push flat-out over every corner of every lap.
But is Menegaux right to so quickly dismiss F1 and the FIA’s attitude towards the tyres they want to see in the sport over the years to come?
Formula 1 has been a single-tyre category ever since Michelin left the world championship at the end of 2006. Bridgestone spent four seasons as the exclusive supplier between 2007 and 2010, before Pirelli took over at the start of 2011.
Pirelli returned to Formula 1 after 20 years with tyres which were very different to those raced in F1 previously. This was intentional. Just two weeks before the FIA named them as F1’s next supplier in June 2010, the Canadian Grand Prix took place, a race that changed the sport’s philosophy over tyres.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
The typical tyre strategy in 2010 was for drivers to start the race on the softer compound and then make a single pit stop for the harder tyres to run to the end. However at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with track temperatures approaching 40C, Bridgestone’s chosen super-soft and medium tyre compounds wilted.
The dramatic lap time difference between the two compounds and high degradation led to an exciting, unpredictable race with many different strategies playing out. F1 and the FIA liked what they saw, and asked Pirelli to produce tyres that would degrade at a variable rate. Pirelli did as they were asked, making tyres which had a built-in performance ‘cliff’ where the grip would drop off dramatically.
Although Pirelli’s tyres had their critics – notably after a spate of dramatic failures at Silverstone in 2013 – Pirelli’s made-to-degrade tyres achieved what F1 and the FIA wanted for the sport. When the exclusive tyre supplier contract was next opened, the requirement that tyres should be made with a ‘cliff’ built in was retained when Pirelli retained the tender for subsequent periods.
In their invitation to tender for the exclusive tyre supplier for the current period – covering 2020-23 and later extended to include 2024 – the FIA clearly outlined its targets for how rapidly lap times should degrade for each of the three compounds used in the vast majority of race weekend. Target ‘A1’ of the tender asked the tyre manufacturer to aim for compounds that would lose roughly two seconds of performance at different rates – the hards by 22% race distance, the mediums at 18% and the softs at 10% race distance.
The FIA also set a target for rough lap time difference between the three compounds: the hard tyre was the baseline, with the mediums supposed to be around 1.2 seconds a lap quicker and the softs 2.2 seconds a lap faster than the hards. In 2023, Pirelli’s tyres are far closer in performance then that initial FIA target requested, with Pirelli’s own data suggesting the medium compound has been, on average, seven tenths of a second a lap quicker than the hards over the opening three race weekends, with the soft tyres 1.26s a lap faster.
For 2025 and beyond, the FIA states four main aims for F1’s tyres – aside from the overriding concern of safety. Of highest priority is: “improvement of the show”. The secondary concern is “driveability” of the tyres, followed by overall performance and finally the tyre’s operating conditions.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
However, there does seem to have been a philosophy change for 2025. No longer is the FIA calling for compounds that rapidly degrade with major lap time deltas between each step. Instead, they explicitly specify tyres which will offer “very little degradation” across “all the three compounds.”
The FIA’s ideal hard compound during a race weekend would last around 180 kilometres (a little over half a race distance) with the mediums lasting just under a third of a race distance and the softs around a quarter of a race distance. In terms of lap time, the FIA are calling for more parity across the compounds than teams have ever had over the start of 2023 so far. They want the mediums to be around half-a-second a lap quicker than the hard compound during a typical race weekend, with the softs around a full second a lap faster than the hards.
However, any fans who have longed to see the back of tyres deliberately designed to produce a ‘cliff’ will be left disappointed. The recent tender still explicitly mentions a “non-linear performance gradient change (‘cliff’)” as being “desirable both for its impact on race strategies and to ensure tyres are not run to a point of excessive wear”. For Michelin, and potentially other tyre manufacturers, this is the crucial factor that dissuades them from considering a bid of their own.
Even if Pirelli are reselected as F1’s sole tyre manufacturer it looks like the sport wants to strike a more conservative balance between durability and performance. One that could, in theory, see fewer pit stops during a race on average as tyres are built to last longer than they are currently supposed to. And with less of a performance gap between the various compounds, that could offer teams more flexibility to commit to the compound combinations that suit their cars best, rather than simply go with the optimal strategy that the tyres dictate.
But whoever ends up supplying tyres to Formula 1 from 2025 and beyond, expect tyre wear and performance to continue to be major talking points every grand prix weekend.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
