Formula 1 will continue to use five tyre compounds in 2027, with Pirelli confirming that no additional compound will be introduced. Dario Marrafuschi, Head of Pirelli Motorsport, revealed that the Italian manufacturer has decided against adding a softer C6 tyre, even after evaluating the possibility for circuits like Monaco. He also explained the objectives behind next season’s tyre development programme.
As Formula 1’s exclusive tyre supplier for the past 15 years, Pirelli believes there is no need to change a formula that has proven successful. The company is currently finalising the tyre construction for the 2027 season, with homologation scheduled for September. The compounds themselves will be confirmed at the end of the current campaign, but Motorsport.com has learned that the range will once again consist of five compounds.
In an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com, Pirelli Motorsport Director Dario Marrafuschi confirmed that Formula 1 will continue to use compounds ranging from C1 to C5 in 2027.
“The compounds are constantly being developed, and we’ve already started that process during previous tests. We’ve completed the groundwork and established a foundation for what the new material packages could look like for next year in terms of the compounds.
“Once the tyre construction has been finalised, we will optimise the compound range based on the results we’ve already achieved. I can already confirm that there will still be five levels. We won’t add or remove a compound. We discussed introducing another compound level, but if we take Monaco as an example, we ultimately saw that most cars started the race on the C4, which was the medium compound.”
Pirelli had already ruled out the C6 at the end of the 2025 season because the performance gap to the C5 was not large enough to justify its production and homologation. This year, the company also concluded that the Monaco Grand Prix—one of the events where the C6 could potentially have been used—proved that the C5 was more than capable of delivering the desired performance.
“In qualifying, even with an additional preparation lap, the final minutes of the session were incredibly exciting on the C5. That’s why we believe introducing an even softer compound is unnecessary.
“We also saw an excellent race in Monaco, and if we were to use a C6 on that circuit, it would have little or no purpose for the rest of the season. For that reason, we’ll recalibrate the five compound levels based on next year’s target performance.”
Marrafuschi, who recently succeeded Mario Isola as Head of Pirelli Motorsport, also explained the main objectives behind the 2027 tyre compounds. The priority will be to maintain clear performance differences between the compounds while ensuring a proportional level of tyre degradation.
“Our objective remains the same: to create a meaningful performance difference between the five compounds in terms of outright lap time, while ensuring tyre degradation progresses in a balanced way. That allows teams to choose between strategies that are competitive with one another at every Grand Prix.
“We saw this in Barcelona and also in Austria, where the two-stop and three-stop strategies were very similar in terms of race time. At Silverstone, however, the one-stop and two-stop strategies were much further apart. Looking ahead to next year, we want to bring those strategies much closer together so that, unless there’s a Safety Car or another neutralisation, teams and drivers have more freedom to choose different approaches, manage tyre degradation according to the characteristics of their cars, and create more strategic battles,” concluded the Head of Pirelli Motorsport.
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