Pirelli explains why it has elected to experiment with exciting tyre allocation at Spa, Mexico and Texas

Having supplied teams with a bold tyre selection at the Belgian Grand Prix, Pirelli's Motorsport Director Mario Isola has revealed that the Italian manufacturer will continue to experiment with aggressive tyre choices at two venues in the remainder of the schedule.

While Pirelli usually brings three consecutive compounds from its six-compound range, the Belgian Grand Prix saw the Milan-based tyre manufacturer chose three dry weather compounds that are not consecutive.

The hardest compound of its range, the C1 acted as the hard tyre while the C3 was provided as the medium and the C4 as the soft at Spa-Francorchamps.

Asked to comment on this unusual tyre selection and whether it was in line with what Pirelli had expected ahead of the Spa weekend, the Milan-based tyre manufacturer's Motorsport Director Mario Isola noted: "It’s difficult to come to a conclusion for Spa where we had the weather that was not helping at all.

"But I believe the idea was good, and that's why we decided to have the same approach for Texas and Mexico where we skip a compound between Hard and Medium.

"Basically, the target is always the same: to have a variation in strategies and to have teams planning a one-stop or two-stop, so different approaches to the race.

"We made some simulations, and we believe that creating a bigger gap between the Hard and the Medium means that if one team wants to use the Hard and target a one-stop race, they are penalised by a slower tyre, while if a team wants to be aggressive, but that means moving to a two-stop strategy, at that time you can use the Medium and the Soft that are faster.

"So, this is the approach. For Mexico and Austin, we believe we can try this solution again.

Pressed on to reveal why the Italian tyre manufacturer selected Austin and Mexico as the next two venues for the bold tyre choice, Isola stated: "Because of the simulation we were running with our modelling department that is telling us the two-stop strategy is slightly quicker than the one-stop.

"Usually, if you have a one-stop and two-stop that are very close in terms of total race time, the teams choose a one-stop. They don't want to take a risk of an additional pit stop, traffic or a mistake during the stop. So, they move in a natural way towards a one-stop race.

"That means in Mexico and Texas we have a simulation telling us the two-stop is a few seconds quicker. In some other races, we have also decided to change the allocation: we go softer in Baku, we go softer in Zandvoort without skipping one compound, just moving one step softer, while we decided to go one step harder in Brazil, because last year Brazil was with the C3, C4 and C5, and the C5 was not used during the race.

"The target is to have all three compounds suitable for the race, not just two out of three. With Brazil, we want to come back one step," Isoa concluded.