Pirelli is assessing whether to expand the number of Soft compound tyre used in Formula 1 from 2025 amid the rising number of street circuits present in the series.
The Italian manufacturer, which has extended its deal with F1 until 2027, decides on three options from the six slick compounds it has available for each of the rounds.
However, the continued increase in low-grip street circuits being added to the calendar across recent times has prompted Pirelli to take action with a new construction.
The most recent Monaco Grand Prix was criticised as it produced a dull encounter with limited overtaking moves and strategic variance across the entire 78-lap event.
Pirelli has tested an even softer version than it boasts at present at Paul Ricard over the past week as the brand builds towards finalising plans for the 2025 allocation.
“We collected quite a lot of good information — we finalized more or less the construction of the 2025 slick tyres,” Pirelli Motorsport boss Mario Isola told RACER.
“We have very promising compounds to reduce overheating for 2025.
“The idea is to also introduce a new C6 compound, a softer one, because in the calendar we have more and more street circuits and we need softer compounds.”
Several drivers and teams have lobbied suggestions to spice up races in Monte Carlo, which has comprised calls to introduce a special tyre that is used that weekend.
However, Isola has stressed that the potential introduction of a sixth compound in 2025 would be implemented with the intention of using it for more races than once.
“The request was to reduce the overheating,” he added.
“The risk is that if you reduce the overheating they change less, because obviously they can run more laps without high degradation.
“If we go in this direction then we need to have softer compounds in the range to select the compounds properly for each event.
“Obviously the target we have to encourage a mix between one and two-stop strategies. So we made a proposal to go a bit softer.
“So our proposal was not having any constraints on the number of we homologate.
“We said, ‘Let’s think about a C6, softer than C5, that can open up different strategies’ and we tested one in Paul Ricard a couple of days ago.
“It’s the first attempt but the idea is to go in this direction and probably homologate six compounds next year.”
