The new-for-2021 compound only made a pair of appearances last year.
It was debuted in Darwin, where high ambient temperatures meant degradation was lower than expected, before being used again, with a lower maximum starting pressure, at Sydney Motorsport Park.
For this year the softest of the three dry compounds will be used across five events, starting with the season opener back at SMP.
For the twin 300-kilometre races at the Eastern Creek circuit drivers will have two sets of super softs along with five sets of the hard compound rubber.
Symmons Plains, Winton and Hidden Valley will then be exclusively run on the super soft, with five sets for qualifying onwards at all three of those events.
The mix of hard/super soft then returns for Townsville.
Albert Park is also a mixed compound round, however it’s split between the hard and soft compounds.
Dunlop has made a number of tweaks to the super soft for its sophomore season, starting with a blue marking to differentiate it from the soft.
The compound has also been softened to try and increase degradation, with 60 kilometres of life the target.
The 2022-spec super soft is being tested for the first time on the Gen3 prototypes at Queensland Raceway today.
“We wanted something that stands out,” Dunlop’s Supercars boss Kevin Fitzsimons told the official Supercars website.
“Blue stands out, it really does. It jumps out at you in all sorts of lighting.
“This is a good time to give [the new-spec tyre] a run, and make sure the tweaks we made are in the right direction.
“There are multiple chemicals that go into the make-up of the compound; a bit more of this and less of that softens the tyre up.
“This particular tyre, we don’t want it to last as long… hopefully we get some knowledge today so we can work ahead.”
Fitzsimons added that running the tyres on the Gen3 prototypes will help shape the development of the rubber for the next-generation cars.
“We’ve already seen that the Gen3 cars wear the tyres significantly like the [existing] car [does],” he said.
“There’s a development plan to try some different compounds so we come up with a tyre that gives us a good event.
“Drivers mentioned in Darwin and Sydney that there wasn’t as many marbles compared to the soft tyre, so that could be a good thing moving forward.
“These cars won’t have an undertray, so they won’t stockpile all the rubber around corners or over bumps.”
2022 Dunlop super soft control tyre
Photo by: Mark Horsburgh, Edge Photographics
