F1 teams choose peculiar tyre allocations for F1 pre-season testing

A full list of tyre selections for the upcoming pre-season test in Bahrain has been published by Pirelli.

During the three days of running from February 21 - 23, all teams will have 35 sets of tyres at their disposal.

Five types of tyres will be used this year, from C1 (the hardest) to C5 (the softest). For pre-season testing, teams were asked to choose their selections for the first on-track sessions of the year.

The selection can be seen below - something to note is that the C1, C2, and C3 tyres are the three compounds that will be used next week during the opening race weekend in Bahrain.

There is heavy emphasis on those as the C4 and C5 tyres won't manage long stints on the rough Bahrain asphalt.

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What stands out?

There are a few things that stand out from the selection made by the teams. The C5 is vastly unpopular, with a majority of teams opting to arrive in Bahrain with no plan to run the softest compound.

The C4 is not very popular for the same reason. Two teams, McLaren and Alpine, will not be seen at all with a red-walled tyre at the test, with Alpine arriving with a striking number of C1 tyres.

The most popular tyre is clearly the C3, the middle compound in Pirelli's range. During the first Grand Prix weekend, that will be the softest tyre available and will be used prominently during qualifying.

By choosing so many of the C3 tyres, the teams can also look at the first race weekend with more confidence. Mercedes has by far the most medium tyres with 25 of the 35 sets in its arsenal being the yellow-walled compound.

Ferrari will take the most 'soft' tyres with six sets of C4s and two sets of C5s. Red Bull has opted for a balanced distribution, with the C3 tyres as the clear outlier.

However, we will not see the softest C5 tyre attached to the RB20 of Max Verstappen or Sergio Perez in the coming days, which may mask its pace ahead of the first round of the year.