Pirelli confident in F1 future: "Happy to be committed for a long period"

Pirelli head of motor racing Mario Isola says the company is happy to be committed to F1 in the long term, as the tyre makers revealed they already started designing the completely new tyres for 2021.

One of the many regulation changes in 2021 will be the tyres. The current design has 13-inch wheel rims, but the size of those will increase by almost 50% to 18-inch wheels. Another thing is that tyre warmers will be banned from 2021 onwards, meaning there's a lot of work to be done in the coming two years to facilitate those changes.

Pirelli's contract with F1 to be its exclusive tyre provider runs until 2023, meaning they'll still be providing the rubber when the new rules go into effect. Isola, for one, is happy to be on board long-term as the Formula 1 faces big changes.

"There are so many discussions on the future of Formula 1, the new cars of 2021, and the change of size and so on that I’m optimistic," Isola was quoted by Racer at the Autosport International Show.

"There are a lot of discussions around that. I think that it’s normal in Formula 1 when you have such a big change like the renewal of the agreement amongst teams and FOM that it’s a delicate situation, but we’re happy that we committed for a long period on our side."

Speaking on the bigger tyres and what this will mean for the sport, Isola was happy to announce Pirelli are already working on that, despite it being two years away.

"We already started to design the new tyres because we cannot wait. The deadline was already in the past.

"What we can do is adapt the tyres, the design, to the new rules when they are available. But we need to know at least 80-90 percent of the expected performance of the cars as soon as possible... without that information, it is really a challenge.

“We have two years in front of us before using the 18-inch tyres so it’s important that we use this time in a good way.

'We cannot lose time but I believe we can do something good if we have the right process."