Pirelli announces its tire choices for Miami and Canada

Fans eagerly await the return of the Formula 1 After more than a month of enforced hiatus, teams and drivers are also starting to get restless. This is also true for Pirelli Motorsport, which has been the exclusive tire supplier to the teams since 2011. The Italian firm is already looking ahead to the two spring Grands Prix in Miami (May 1-3) and Montreal (Canada, May 22-24) by revealing its tire choices for these two North American events.

In Miami, the softest compounds in the range—from the C3 (Hard) to the C5 (Soft)—will be used. This is the same choice as in 2025, when the range was made one step softer compared to 2024. Two weeks later, in Montreal, the drivers will return to the same tires as in Miami. This marks a change from 2025, when Pirelli attempted to introduce its C6 tire, the softest in the range, which hadn't exactly impressed in its debut at Imola a few weeks earlier. Unsurprisingly, the drivers also shunned it in Montreal, some even preferring to make their Q3 runs with the medium tire, the C5.

The Pirelli tires used at the start of this season. Photo: Pirelli Motorsport.

Montreal is toughening up!

“It’s very rare to see a driver take pole position on medium tires in the dry — the last time was at the 2020 Portuguese Grand Prix, thanks to Lewis Hamilton — but yesterday, four drivers set their best times in Q3 on the C5 tire. Mario Isola, then head of Pirelli Motorsport, debriefed the day before the race. "Since its first appearance at Imola, we have observed that the performance difference between the C6 and the C5 is quite small, on the order of one to one and a half tenths, and that the C6 offers optimal performance within a narrower operating window."

"Here in Montreal, several drivers preferred to rely on the C5, which they know well, rather than chasing the extra performance that the C6 could offer, feeling more comfortable with a compound that gave them more confidence to tackle such a tricky circuit, with its rumble strips and walls." continued the Italian. "Result: four C5 entries in the tire column, next to each driver's best lap, were recorded in Q3."

While there had been talk at one point of reworking the C6 tire to create a larger gap with the C5 tire in 2026, Pirelli ultimately decided to remove this extra-soft compound from its range. This explains why drivers will be able to rely on C3 to C5 tires in Montreal, on a street circuit where George Russell triumphed last year ahead of Kimi Antonelli. A surprising scenario at the time, but one that would be far less so if it were to repeat itself in a few weeks…

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