Pirelli unveils 18-inches low-profile F1 tyres

Recently ace tyre manufacturer Pirelli gave a glimpse into Formula 1’s potential future. When it unveiled 18-inch concept tyres instead of the regular 13-inches at the second day of this week's Silverstone. Charles Pic in the Lotus' E22 completed the demonstration for the concept tyres. He completed 14 laps on the developmental wheels in a best time of 1:44.728, some nine seconds off the overall pace set on 2014 tyres.

The concept tyres have the same width as the current 13-inch tyres with 245mm at the front and 325mm at the rear, but a diameter that is bigger by 30mm. The total weight, including the rim, is around 4 kilograms heavier than the regular tyre. The main advantage of the new tyre id its stiffer sidewall that helps maintain the structural rigidity as-well-as helps in maintain a constant pressure, as there is less actual air inside the tyre.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: "In our view, the new tyres looked stunning fitted to the Lotus, and the reaction has already been felt all over the world. These are just a prototype concept, but if the teams decided that they wanted us to proceed in this direction, we have the capability to carry on development in this area and come up with a production-ready version in a comparatively short space of time. We’ve heard a lot of opinions already and we look forward to canvassing other opinions in the coming weeks and months. Even though performance wasn’t by any means priority here, the new tyres still behaved exactly in line with our expectations, so we’re clearly potentially at the beginning of a huge development curve, with the wheel and tyre size rules having remained unaltered for many years. These new tyres were clearly the focus of the test, but of course we managed to complete a lot of work for next year and the shorter term as well, with the two days of dedicated tyre testing from Ferrari, Marussia, Lotus and Red Bull as well. Having learned a lot from the previous tyre tests in Bahrain and Barcelona, we were now able to carry out a lot of more targeted work for 2015, on a fast and demanding circuit."