Russell unimpressed with 2026 tyres

Having tried the proposed 2026 tyres on a modified 2024 car, George Russell was left unimpressed.

The new generation of tyres, follow the all-round trend of reducing dimension, the 18″ rubber to be 25 millimetres narrower at the front and 30 at the rear

Following last week’s pre-season test, Alpine and Williams ran the proposed rubber on mule-cars, based on their 2023 contenders, while last month the French team was joined by McLaren and Mercedes at Jerez.

At the Spanish track, Russell was at the wheel of a W15, the car he drove last season, adapted to fit the new dimension of tyre, the Briton completing 135 laps.

“That was a bit of a challenge compared to the wider tyres we have today,” he told re[orts in Bahrain. “It was quite a step worse with the new tyres.

“That is naturally the case, because they’re just much more narrow,” he added. “So hopefully they will be improved over the upcoming months.”

“We cannot just rely on the mule cars because it won’t be sensible,” Pirelli’s Mario Isola told Autosport in reaction to Russell’s comments. “We will continue to provide them a virtual model of the tyre to use in their simulators and they come back to us with their feedback.

“This is the right direction we should continue in,” he insisted.

As for the upcoming season, the first three races feature the same compounds used last year, but for the fifth round, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the compounds are one step softer than in 2024.

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 tyres, 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, the brand-new C6 will not be called into play in this initial part of the season.

“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 Isola.

“In 2024, 18 of the 20 drivers had started on the mediums, namely the C3, and an early neutralisation in the race pushed 14 of them 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.”