Central-to-peripheral nuclear modification factors in Pb–Pb collisions at<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si1.gif" overflow="scroll"><mml:msqrt><mml:msub><mml:mi>s</mml:mi><mml:mi mathvariant="normal">NN</mml:mi></mml:msub></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>17.3</mml:mn><mml:mtext> </mml:mtext><mml:mtext>GeV</mml:mtext></mml:math>

We present central-to-peripheral nuclear modification factors, RCP, for the pT distributions of KS0, Λ, Λ¯, and negatively charged particles, measured at central rapidity in Pb–Pb collisions at top SPS energy. The data cover the 55% most central fraction of the inelastic cross section. The KS0 and Λ RCP(pT) are similar in shape to those measured at sNN=200GeV at RHIC, though they are larger in absolute value. We have compared our KS0 RCP data to a theoretical calculation. The prediction overestimates the data at pT≈3–4GeV/c, unless sizeable parton energy loss is included in the calculation.