Pirelli will move away from its high degrading tyres next season in a bid to help boost overall speed and reduce the amount of 'tyre saving' drivers are forced to do at present.
When Pirelli joined Formula 1, it's mandate was to create tyres which degraded quickly, forcing drivers to stop more often. It's had the desired effect, throwing up varying strategies, but has also seen some driving conservatively to preserve and extend tyre life.
In a bid to stop that and to deal with the increase in downforce, Pirelli will create more durable tyres. But motorsport director Paul Hembery is confident an element of degradation will remain, avoiding a return to the Bridgestone and Michelin days when a set of tyres could last an entire race.
"Well, we will have much less degradation in 2017 and tyres will – if we achieve what we are trying to achieve – have a wider operating window," he told the official Formula 1 website.
"Yes, that in itself will take away some level of strategy – or at least variations between teams. Having said that, we will still try to achieve some level of degradation!
"What we definitely will see is faster cars. We expect a three to four second improvement in performance, which is clearly quite substantial. So the tyres will be working very hard and the compounds will be working hard – and that will cause degradation, so we will still have a good level of strategy."
Hembery also raised concerns over pre-season testing, suggesting it could be relocated from F1's traditional testing circuit of Barcelona to somewhere hotter.
"We would prefer to go somewhere like Bahrain or Abu Dhabi. The temperatures will be representative and we know the tracks very well," he added. "We definitely would want to go to representative tracks."
