There’s been a lot of talk about tyres in Formula 1 circles this season. But my issue is not with Pirelli, but with the FIA’s terminology – specifically prime and option. Yes, I’m arguing over semantics. Strap in for a ripsnorter of a blog post.

The regulations state that two specifications of dry-weather tyres are available at every race. You know that. The differentiating factor between these is that drivers get six sets of the prime tyre, and five of the option.

It’s a working assumption that the prime tyre is the harder compound of the two – indeed it’s an assumption made by the Formula 1 website. But that certainly wasn’t the case at the 2011 Indian Grand Prix, and it doesn’t appear to be set in stone as the rules stand.

A couple of definitions from those helpful chaps at Oxford Dictionaries will help us on our way:

prime
• of first importance; main
• of the best possible quality; excellent

option
• a thing that is or may be chosen

So the term prime is vaguely appropriate, in that it is the ‘main’ tyre by virtue of one more set being available. It’s not a helpful term though, because there’s an implication that it’s also the ‘best’ tyre, which it may or may not be race by race.

But it’s option that really gets my goat. In a dry race, both specifications of tyre have to be used. There is literally no option. How can such madness have arisen? I’d hazard a guess that something may have got lost in translation – from French, the FIA’s favourite language, perhaps.

Fortunately, I have a selection of alternatives to prime and option: primary and secondary; main and alternate; major and minor. But I think clearer still would be something slightly more abstract; plain old A and B would do the trick nicely.

FIA, you’re welcome.

Photo Credit: Joseph Brent – Flickr – Some rights reserved