Tires have more effect on a car's cornering performance than any other part of the car. It is the car's only contact with the road, so it's obviously a critical part of F1. This year, Pirelli has re-imagined the design of the tires, while still complying with the FIA's request to make them have extreme amounts of degradation. The most visible change is the coloring of the hard tire. It has been changed from silver to orange. Which is good, because having the medium and hard tires use ridiculously similar markings was getting a bit tiresome and probably caused significant frustration for commentators. Anyways, the other main difference is that the tires are softer, mainly the harder ones, to try and bridge the gap. This is going to pose a lot of problems for teams in Q3 unless the starting on qualifying tires rule changes. Even last year teams like Mercedes were going without running in Q3 to conserve tires, and having teams not run is not good for the sport. Beyond that, furing the race, new Mclaren pickup Sergio Perez was wuoted saying he expects up to 10 pit stops per car in the race. That's less than 6 laps per tire (58 laps usually in Melborne). That could mean F1 is entering a new era where tire conserving drivers are of much greater value than just plain fast ones.
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