Pirelli’s new-for-2016 ultrasoft tyre will make its first race weekend appearance in May’s Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco 2016.
The purple-marked rubber will be one of three dry-weather compounds offered to the teams for the famous street circuit, along with the yellow-marked soft and the red-marked supersoft.
Under the 2016 regulations, each driver must have one set of softs and one set of supersofts available for the race, and must save one set of ultrasofts for Q3.
From his 13-set allocation for the weekend, he may then choose the compounds of the remaining 10 sets of tyres.
Those choices must be made in advance (eight weeks prior to the race for European rounds, 14 weeks for long-haul races) and will be made public nearer the time of the Grand Prix.
The 2016 tyre choices so far:
Australia - supersoft, soft, medium
Bahrain - supersoft, soft, medium
China - supersoft, soft, medium
Russia - supersoft, soft, medium
Spain - hard, medium, soft
Monaco - ultrasoft, supersoft, soft
Canada - ultrasoft, supersoft, soft
Europe - supersoft, soft, medium