For the first time, since the abolition of the tyre wars, teams will have seven dry and two wet compounds to choose from in Formula 1 races this year.
With this comes a very steep learning curve, especially given that Pirelli have also engineered higher levels of compound degradation into the new tyres.
With the overall goal being to try and entice the teams into new and different strategies this year, Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola believes there could be a few surprises as the teams will still be learning how the compounds react under race conditions after a significant part of preseason testing was affected by unseasonably cold weather.
"I am sure there are some details we do not know because the compounds are more or less all new, except for the medium – that is the soft coming from last year," Isola said. "We already designed the Soft, SuperSoft, UltraSoft… and the HyperSoft is completely new.
"We had a test last year in Abu Dhabi, we had a test [in Barcelona this year] but you cannot say that you know any detail of any compound with two tests. The HyperSoft is a compound that we need to understand where we use it.
"Also it was very important to confirm the delta lap time [during pre-season] because in Abu Dhabi we had completely different conditions, different circuit layout and different circuit roughness. So we have to understand and collect more data. I think that we will start to really know the compounds by mid-season, not before. Before mid-season the learning process is quite a steep curve."
Despite two weeks of testing Pirelli still does not have a clear picture as to exactly what the differences between the different compounds are, as teams have been experimenting with different fuel loads and aerodynamics.
"We saw also a lot of differences inside the same team working on the car in a different way," he said. "It's all part of the learning process. Also for us, the car and tyre, and how the two are meshing. The cars are different. They look similar but they are very different. The way in which they use the tyre is very different. This is all good information for us."
This coming weekend at Albert Park in Melbourne, the teams will have the Soft, SuperSoft and UltraSoft compounds to choose from for the first grand prix of 2018.
