Pirelli has announced that it will take its soft and hard compounds to the British Grand Prix weekend, despite Ferrari's admitting its chances will be hurt with the use of the latter.
Pirelli's decision means teams will be using the same tires run at the Spanish Grand Prix, where Ferrari's drivers finished a lap down as they struggled with the hard tires, despite Fernando Alonso leading the race while running with the softs.
Teammate Felipe Massa had admitted before the Pirelli decision that his team would be in trouble if the Italian manufacturer opted for the harder tires for Silverstone.
"I am not so optimistic with which tires we are going to have there, because I have heard that maybe we are going to have medium and hard," said Massa. "If we have that, it can be a problem for us – not just for us but for most of the teams maybe taking away Red Bull or even McLaren."
Pirelli said it would not be pressured into favoring one team over a rival when making the decision.
"The teams have a difference of opinion," said Pirelli's Paul Hembery. "We have asked their advice but clearly we don't want to favor or penalize one over the other. We have to take a look at the whole field.
"We have 12 teams we look at and feel that we are going to make the right choice for them, and also the right choice for us, of course. Our main concern is to make sure that we don't penalize any team. Some people have decided that from Barcelona the hard tire favors those with high downforce, so we have to be careful that the strategy based on hard tires is not going to penalize any particular team. Equally, we don't want to be in the situation where we have five pit stops, so it is a balance we have to find."