Lewis Hamilton concedes he does not have “a lot of good things to say” about Pirelli’s 2019 Formula 1 tyres, and beli♏eves the new compounds willღ prove “challenging”. 

Pirelli has made tweaks to its rubber for the upcoming campaign, including introducing the thinner-🔥gauge tyres that were used in three races last year in a bid to ease concerns about overheating and blistering, while it has also revised its coding system. 

But Hamilton, who shared a video on social media of his dog Roscoe playing with a tyre during the second week of pre-season testing, feels the changes have ultimately resul💙ted in compounds which are now “too hard”. 

“Roscoe didn’t like them -🍸 he said they were too hard,” Hamiltoඣn said. 

“I though🍌t the same, that’s why I said he concurs with me, they’re a little bit hard. I don’t really have a lot of good things to say about that so it’s best that I probably don’t say anything. 

“I think as we get into theᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ year it’s going to be a challenge. They’re more challenging this year than t✅hey were last.” 

Hamilton said Pirelli should have continued to stick with its thinner-gauge tyres it used for selected rounds in 2018, though the Italian manufacturer insists it ha🦩s done just that. 

▨“I think last year we had a tyre that was just OK, then we had th𒈔e lower-gauge tyre - we had it somewhere like France and Silverstone - and that was a pretty good tyre,” Hamilton added. 

“The simplest thing th🥂ey could have done is just bring that to this year and they didn’t, they did something else.” 

Roscoe inspecting the tyres. Yup he concurs they are🍸 too hard to bite

— Lewis Hamilton (@LewisHamilton)

Hamilton also believes Pirelli’s new identification syst💮em - a move to try and simplify its compound choices -༺ has actually made things “more confusing” than its previous colour-based coding format. 

“We have❀ all these different names of tyre - C5, C4, C3, C2, C1 - which for me personally is more confusing than all the colours we had,” Hamilton said. “But we’ll ❀get used to it and it will be the norm. 

“Valtteri [Bottas] seems like he’s enjoying drivingꩲ the tyres out there and I’ll get a bit of a better feel for what the tyres are like.&n💙bsp;

“We’ve been driving on more fuel so it’s never a good feeling generally in any year when you’ve got more fuel on board. We’re a꧅ll in the same boat and I’ll try to understand them the best I can.”