How Pirelli's controversial new tyre will shape the Monaco GP and beyond

Overtaking in Monaco is notoriously difficult. Historically, changes in position are rare and often rely on pit strategy or incidents.

Last year's race was particularly processional after an early red flag allowed everyone to pit, leading to a tyre-management race where drivers circulated slowly.

Oscar Piastri noted, "I think at one point we were going slower than Formula 2."

To combat this, the FIA introduced a rule requiring at least three sets of tyres to be used in the Monaco race, effectively forcing a two-stop strategy.

However, this is seen as a temporary fix. For true strategic variety, different options with potential upsides are needed. This is where Pirelli's new C6 tyre comes in.

The C6, an even softer compound, was designed with street circuits like Monaco in mind but debuted at Imola.

Pirelli wants to deploy the C6 at more races than planned to enable 'skipping' compounds, creating bigger performance differentials between the tyre selections brought to a race weekend.

According to Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola, teams tend to converge on one-stop strategies when compounds are too close. Pirelli aims to encourage two-stops for more action and unpredictability.

Pirelli made compounds more resilient this year, allowing drivers to push longer, which has reduced strategy variations. Since compounds cannot be changed in-season, the focus is on selecting existing compounds differently.

Pirelli plans simulations to see if skipping a compound level (e.g., bringing C2, C4, C6) can create a bigger performance gap, making a hard tyre significantly slower but pushable, encouraging a two-stop soft-medium strategy for others.

Trying the C6 at Imola was crucial for collecting data outside Monaco's unique conditions, explained Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra.

Imola showed the C6 has a sharp performance peak and can suffer from thermal stress in fast corners.

While the C6 proved challenging as a race tyre at Imola, the data is valuable for future selections. Pirelli is considering C6 for Singapore and other races, potentially jumping compounds.

For this strategy to work, the C6 needs to be a strong qualifying tyre.

A previous attempt with a 'hypersoft' in Monaco (2018) resulted in a processional race. The new minimum two-stop rule should prevent a repeat of that exact scenario this year.