INDEPENDENT RACING JOURNALISMFacts. Context. Evidence.
GPBeat.comGPBeat.com
THE INDEPENDENT RACING DESK
ENNL
F1 news
F1 / NEWS & CONTEXT
Pirelli P Zero medium slick on a display car, photographed on 1 August 2026. Illustrative tyre photo. Resized and converted to WebP.

Pirelli turns to 2017 data for Malaysian Grand Prix tyre choice

Archive photograph: Pirelli P Zero medium slick on a display car, photographed on 1 August 2026. Illustrative tyre photo. Resized and converted to WebP. · 2026-08-01Archive photo · 2026-08-01 · TaurusEmerald · CC BY-SA 4.0

Pirelli is using data from Formula 1’s last race at Sepang to select tyres for Malaysia’s planned Grand Prix, although parts of the circuit have since been resurfaced.

From the GPBeat newsroomPublished · · 1 min

Pirelli plans to bring its C2 hard, C3 medium and C4 soft tyres to the Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang on 4 October. The race was announced on 26 July as a replacement for the Bahrain Grand Prix, leaving ten weeks between the announcement and race day.

Dario Marrafuschi of Pirelli told RacingNews365 and other reporters in Hungary that the company would use results from Formula 1’s last Malaysian race, in 2017, to choose the compounds rather than data from earlier years. He said the tyres used in 2017 were somewhat comparable with today’s in width and construction.

Marrafuschi said there was not enough time to send staff to Malaysia for further analysis and measurements while Pirelli prepared the tyres. Sepang’s layout and length have remained the same since 2017, but parts of the circuit have been resurfaced.

Teams know which compounds Pirelli plans to supply, but how well the 2017 results translate to Sepang’s resurfaced sections remains to be seen.

Sources 01
  1. SOURCEF1-teams overgeleverd aan blinde Pirelli-gokRacingNews365 · Source date as found: 2026-09-28
Source context

RacingNews365’s 28 September article reports Marrafuschi’s remarks in Hungary and the planned tyre allocation ahead of the race.