How Many Tires Do Formula 1 Teams Use In A Season?

Counting how many tires an F1 team uses per season isn't a straightforward addition; that's because tire use is heavily regulated in the racing league. Furthermore, the tires that a driver uses will vary according to track and weather conditions. Teams also cannot just use any tire brand, and they have a maximum allocation per weekend, forcing them to carefully consider their tire strategy. At the moment, Pirelli, which is headquartered in Milan, Italy, is F1's official tire brand, which started supplying them in 2011 and is contracted to do so until 2027.

According to F1 rules, one driver gets 13 sets of smooth, dry weather tires for Grand Prix races (12 sets for Sprint Races) and seven sets of wet weather tires per weekend. This gives them a total of 19 to 20 sets or 76 to 80 tires to play with per weekend. The 2025 Formula 1 calendar, which marks its 75th season, has 24 weekends with six F1 Sprint Races. That means each driver in a team gets a total of 474 sets or 1,896 tires. With each team fielding two drivers each, that means they are allotted a total of 3,792 tires for the entire season.

However, the total number of tires they'll actually use will be significantly less than that number. That's because this includes all the tire options that a team has, which it doesn't have to use at all. For example, if it doesn't rain during the weekend, then the seven sets of wet weather tires will have gone unused for that specific track.

Let's look at a hypothetical situation for one driver for one weekend. Each driver is required to return two sets of tires for each of the three practice sessions before the qualifying runs. Then let's say the driver uses a set of tires for each qualifying run, and then two more for the actual race, provided it does not rain. That means a driver will use at least 11 sets or 44 tires for a Grand Prix weekend. This will drop to 10 sets (or 40 tires) for a Sprint race, since tire changes aren't mandatory for these types of events.

So, a driver would use a minimum of 792 tires for all 18 Grand Prix races, plus at least 240 tires for the six Sprint races. This totals to 1,032 tires for the entire 75th season for one driver and 2,064 for the entire team — but this is the minimum amount. If the weather changes, if a tire gets damaged, or if the driver decides to replace their tires during a race, this number will definitely go up. These tire limitations are one of the things a new fan should know about F1 racing, especially as they affect the team's strategy and the outcome of the race.