Tyre temperature and blankets
An F1 tyre needs to be hot to work. Each compound has an operating window, a range of temperatures where the rubber is soft and sticky enough to grip hard without breaking down. Below it the tyre feels like plastic and slides. Above it the rubber starts to overheat and wear faster. A lot of what drivers and engineers talk about on the radio comes down to keeping the tyres in that window.
Tyre blankets
Between runs, tyres sit in electric heating covers called tyre blankets (or tyre warmers). They warm the rubber before the tyre goes on the car, so the driver has some grip from the moment they leave the pit box.
There's a limit on how hot the blankets can get, set by the FIA and Pirelli. For slicks it has been 70°C in recent seasons. The rules also say that blankets are the only thing allowed to heat the tyres, apart from driving the car. For 2026 that wording was tightened to cover cooling too, after some teams were suspected of finding ways to keep tyres cooler than normal.
The sport has talked about banning blankets for years, partly to save energy and partly because Pirelli would like tyres that work without them. The ban has been pushed back each time, and blankets are still allowed in 2026.
When blankets come off
- On the grid, blankets have to be unplugged at the five-minute signal before the start, and can't be plugged back in unless the start is delayed.
- During a race, blankets aren't allowed in the pit lane at all. The pit crew take the blankets off before carrying the new tyres out to the pit box, so the tyres start cooling a little before they're fitted.
Getting tyres up to temperature
Even with blankets, a fresh set is never quite at full temperature when the car leaves the pits. The first lap on new tyres, the out lap, is spent building heat. You'll see drivers weaving, braking hard and accelerating sharply to work energy into the rubber.
This matters most in two situations:
- Qualifying. A driver wants the tyres at their best for one lap. Too cold and they'll lose grip in the first few corners. Too hot and the rear tyres may fade by the end of the lap. Teams plan how fast to drive the out lap, sometimes down to the corner.
- Restarts. Behind the safety car cars travel slowly and the tyres cool down. At the restart, the drivers whose tyres have cooled most are at risk of being passed, or of spinning.
Cold tracks make all of this harder. Some circuits, especially early in the year or at night, are known for making tyres hard to warm up.
Overheating
The opposite problem is just as common. Following another car closely makes the tyres slide more, because there's less downforce in the turbulent air, and sliding heats the surface quickly. Long, fast corners or a hot track surface do the same.
When the surface gets too hot, grip drops and wear speeds up. The driver might be told to drop back a second or two to let the tyres cool, or to take some corners more gently. Overheating also leads to blistering, where heat builds up inside the tyre and chunks of rubber come away from the surface. You can read about that and other kinds of wear in tyre wear and degradation.
Pressures
Tyre temperature and pressure go together: as a tyre heats up, the air inside expands and the pressure rises. Pirelli sets a minimum pressure for each race to keep the tyres safe, and the FIA checks them. Teams would usually like to run lower pressures because a softer tyre puts more rubber on the road, so they set the cold pressure carefully to stay legal once the tyre is hot.
Why it's so sensitive
Road car tyres are designed to work in almost any weather and last tens of thousands of kilometres. F1 tyres are built for maximum grip over a short life, and Pirelli is asked to make them degrade so that strategy matters. The result is a tyre that is very fast in the right conditions and difficult to use in the wrong ones. That's often why one team seems to suddenly find or lose pace from one weekend to the next: their car either keeps the tyres in the window at that track or it doesn't.