What tyres will the teams and drivers have for the 2024 Sao Paulo Grand Prix?

Formula 1 heads to the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix and a weekend of Sprint action – and Pirelli have confirmed the tyres that will be in play for the event.

F1’s official tyre suppliers will provide the C3 compound as the hard, the C4 as the medium and the C5 as the soft at Interlagos – a softer trio of compounds than those brought to Brazil last year – with all of the 4.309km track having recently been entirely resurfaced, including the pit lane, increasing its abrasiveness.

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As it is a Sprint weekend, the allocation of tyres drops from 13 sets to 12, with drivers getting two sets of the hards (marked white), four of the mediums (marked yellow) and six of the softs (marked red). The number of wet weather sets remains the same (five intermediate and two wet).

“The track surface will be a completely unknown factor for drivers and teams this weekend,” say Pirelli. “Complicating the puzzle still further is the fact Pirelli has chosen to bring a softer trio of compounds to Brazil than last year.

“On top of that it’s a Sprint weekend, so that there is only free practice session for teams to find the best set-up, even if, as was seen in Austin, the ‘short’ race in fact proved to be very useful to fine tune the balance of the car for the actual Grand Prix.

“At Interlagos, the lateral and longitudinal forces exerted on the tyres around the 15 corners of this anticlockwise track are medium to low in intensity and well distributed across both axles. Furthermore, the new track surface could see a lowering of lap times and, as a consequence, an increase of the stress to which the tyres are subjected.

“The Brazilian weekend usually provides spectacular action. The circuit named in honour of Jose Carlos Pace presents several overtaking opportunities, but other random factors, such as a high chance of a Safety Car and extremely changeable weather, make the outcome of the Grand Prix uncertain and hard to predict.

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“Usually, the fastest strategy is a two-stop, favouring the use of the softer compounds. Last year, all bar one of the drivers chose to start on the softs, but a red flag after the start allowed for a switch to mediums before ending the race on another set of softs.

“This year, the fact the compounds are a step softer could open up a wider range of possible strategies, making the race even more exciting.”

For more information about Pirelli’s F1 tyres, visit pirelli.com.