F1 News: Pirelli 2025 tire compounds: something new for Jeddah

Today, Pirelli informed all the teams about dry tire choices for the Japanese, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia Grands Prix.

The first four races of the season follow the same compound selection as last year’s, but for the fifth round of 2025, there’s something new.

For the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which takes place at the Jeddah street circuit from 18 to 20 April, a trio of compounds one step softer than in 2024 will be available: C3 as Hard, C4 as Medium and C5 as Soft.

“Based on our experience from last year and with the information gathered during the development phase of the new compounds, we wanted to go in this direction, to give the teams and drivers a wider range of strategy options,” explained Pirelli’s Director of Motorsport, Mario Isola. “In 2024, 18 of the 20 drivers had started on the Medium, namely the C3 and an early neutralization in the race pushed 14 of those to switch immediately to the C2, which was then the Hard, keeping it all the way to the end. With a softer trio, we believe this can lead to a situation where there could be a mix between one or two-stop strategies.”

This year, the Jeddah race takes place over the third weekend of April, whereas the previous four editions were held once in December, in its inaugural year, 2021 and the remaining three times in March.

Suzuka and Sakhir are usually two of the toughest circuits on tires, the former because of the lateral forces exerted on them through the many high speed corners on what is the only figure-of-eight circuit on the calendar and the latter because of the thermal degradation generated by the asphalt.

It is therefore a logical choice to stick with the hardest three compounds in the range (C1 as Hard, C2 as Medium and C3 as Soft). With Melbourne (C3, C4, C5) and Shanghai (C2, C3 e C4) following the same pattern as in 2024, it means that only the brand-new C6 will not be called into play in this initial part of the season.