Tyre compounds and colours

Every car on the grid races on Pirelli tyres, and in dry conditions they all use slicks: tyres with no tread pattern at all, so as much rubber as possible touches the road. The difference between them is the compound, meaning the rubber mix. A softer compound grips harder but wears out faster. A harder compound lasts longer but is slower over a single lap.

#The five dry compounds

For 2026 Pirelli makes five slick compounds, numbered from the hardest to the softest:

Until the end of 2025 there was also a C6, an even softer tyre. Pirelli dropped it for 2026 because there wasn't enough difference in lap time between it and the C5 to make it worth having.

#Why only three per weekend

Pirelli doesn't bring all five to every race. Before each weekend it picks three neighbouring compounds that suit the track, and those three are labelled hard, medium and soft for that event. So the "soft" at one race might be the C5, and at another it might be the C3.

This is why commentators sometimes say "the soft here is the same tyre as last week's medium". The names describe the tyre's role at that race, not its actual rubber.

#Colours on the sidewall

Each tyre has a coloured band on its sidewall so you can tell at a glance what a car is running:

The intermediate and full wet tyres are covered on their own page: intermediate and wet tyres.

#How the compounds compare on track

As a rough guide, the soft is the fastest over one lap and the hard is the slowest, with the gap between each step often somewhere between a few tenths and a second per lap depending on the track. That's why almost everyone uses softs in qualifying.

Over a long run it's less simple. A soft tyre that is worn out can be slower than a fresh hard, so teams are always weighing pace against how many laps a tyre will last. That balance is what drives pit stop strategy, and you can read more about how and why tyres lose performance in tyre wear and degradation.

#The 2026 tyres are smaller

The 2026 cars are lighter and narrower than before, and the tyres were changed to match. They still fit 18-inch wheels, which F1 has used since 2022, but they are about 25 mm narrower at the front and 30 mm narrower at the rear. Less rubber on the road means less grip and less drag, which is part of the plan to make the new cars more efficient. See weight and dimensions for the rest of the changes.

#One supplier for everyone

Pirelli has been F1's only tyre supplier since 2011. Having a single supplier means teams can't win or lose because of a tyre war between manufacturers, which happened in the early 2000s between Bridgestone and Michelin. Pirelli is also asked by the sport to design tyres that wear out at a certain rate, so that races need pit stops and strategy plays a part.