Have the teams struggling with tyre wear necessarily done a bad job though? Pirelli have said they underestimated the performance of this year's cars, and that the top teams are up to three seconds per lap faster than they were anticipating in the simulations they used. Paul Hembery said "They have basically been stressing everything too much, and probably we underestimated the performance." You can hardly say Red Bull and Mercedes didn't do as good a job if Pirelli are saying their tyres can't cope with how good their cars are. And the teams who have good tyre wear will still benefit from that, it's not like they switching to Bridgestones and suddenly completely altering the name of the game, they're merely bringing the tyres up to standard.
Although I agree with this in principle the fact is the tyres aren't just wearing out quickly they're completely falling apart, and it's really only a question of time before one of them falls apart somewhere that really could cause a problem, between 16 & 20 at spa, or curva grande at Monza, the sad fact is they have to be changed for safety reasons. Pirelli must be regretig their decision to enter F1, it's been nothng but a headache for them and it's making their tyres look extremely bad
It's all relative, AG. Clearly some teams coped better with what they were given; in particular, Ferrari and Lotus. And clearly some teams have done worse; obviously Mercedes. However, my point is that altering the tyres mid season is going to cause an awful lot of extra hard work, regardless of the outcome. Obviously those who were coping better would prefer not to have to re-jig and experiment when they had already found a sweet-spot (relative to others). But this will have some crossing their fingers that their relative performance remains unaltered, whilst those who were struggling may at least sense the possibility of relative improvement. Incidentally, I am not complaining; I am merely pointing out that this news is not being greeted with the same applause from everyone. I also agree with Miggins' post about Pirelli's image, which was falling apart at the seams. Yes Miggs, I agree.
unsurprised tbh, they're on a hiding to nothing, they've tried hard to do what has been ordered, and truth be told they've pretty much succeeded, the problem for Pirelli is whoever had been chosen to follow bridgstone would've been screwed by the demands put on them, the complaint against bridgstone was they lasted too well, not a bad problem commercially , and the teams only complained when they didn't have them. Now all anyone hears about is how bad the tyres are.
The FIA has said that the Canada tyre tweaks are solely for safety reasons, so the actually durability of the tyres won't change, but the structural integrity will to stop delaminations. So no team should actually gain an advantage by this. Pretty sure all teams need to come to a unanimous decision regarding tyre durability, which I doubt Ferrari and Lotus would have.
Changes to the durability will require changes in construction and will affect the shape of the tyre, flex of the tyre etc. Why would Lotus and Ferrari complain when they had designed their package to accomodate the tyre behaviours they had seen in simulations and testing. Going back to tyre behaviours of last year will have Red Bull as the biggest benefactor who unsurprisingly were vociferously "lobbying" Pirelli for such a change
Agree, these bloody tyres do not allow motor racing in the manner GP racing should be. A tyre that is ruined because of one isolated over heavy use of the brakes is useless, the racing is a complete farce, oh yes, I know, why bother with having cars at all, why not just race with the simulators, much cheaper, much safer, much quieter, and can be done from the drivers home he won't even have to leave the house, or maybe he can do it on his 'iPod' Raikkonen could even do it whilst he's on the bog.
The only way to create racing without naturally controlling the tyres is have multiple tyre suppliers. In doing so they would have to be competitive on both the construction a compound. I suggested previously that a solution was to have a pit stop window and allow teams to use any of the 4 compounds that would suit their car and track. It was righly poo poo'd by many has being contrived, but the FIA and their instruction to the tyre manufacturer is effectively doing it anyway.
Good idea, but then the tyres would probably become too durable, and it would all have to start over again.
I guess we'll have to wait and see what difference these tyre changes will have. The compound should be staying the same but the way the tyre 'flexes' should change fairly drastically. I still think this will effect the teams in various ways and it'll be a race to see who moans about it first
Agreed, but I still don't like the idea of changing the compounds 1/4 of the way through the season. Those that prepared themselves better for the high-deg 2013 tyres (Lotus, Ferrari) would be crippled for the rest of the year. I'd rather see boring racing than a championship gone begging from someone who deserved it because others won a moaning competition. It's an issue that shouldn't have existed in the first place; Pirelli should have stopped trying to push the limits of degradation around mid-last year. The tyres were much better then, racing didn't feel contrived (relatively speaking); I don't know why they wanted to go further after the great success that was last year.
This is a very relevant point, RR. There can be little doubt that – as Ernie and others have said – the tyres supplied have fallen below par so much that they are essentially no longer up to the job in that they are not allowing "Grand Prix racing" to be the primary show-ground for the world's top drivers to demonstrate the full extent of their skill. However, in my opinion, it would be fundamentally wrong for anyone to blame Pirelli for producing the cardboard they were asked for. No; the problem lies not with poor old Pirelli but those who have been making unreasonable demands upon them since they took over as F1's sole supplier. Those singing the praises of Bridgestone seem not to realise that if they were currently supplying the rubber, they'd have been provided with the same brief. We should conclude therefore, that it is not so much a tyre supplier at fault as a fault of those in charge within the FIA who have bent over backwards (too far in my opinion) to accommodate the whims of a largely impatient, ignorant, action hungry audience. – And of course, the fact is that the moment they feel they are not getting what they want, these people will almost certainly be the first to turn away.
I agree absolutely with RR about moving the goalposts mid-game, it's just not on. I also agree that something has gone badly wrong with the tyres and the pressure on Pirelli to engineer a spectacle. But, I don't believe that the blame lies solely between the FIA and the type of audience you describe; yes, the enfeebled FIA have failed here but the blame must also lie with Bernie's bunch and their greed for growth and the media's perception of what the audience wants: once F1 went to pay TV, the imperative to provide a guaranteed spectacle came with it. I believe that these two points are inextricably linked: yes, from a British point of view, it's easy to blame Bernie and Murdoch but in the bigger picture they are symptomatic of the present nexus of business, media and sport and how sport and its spectators ultimately lose out from the failure of those with the purse-strings to understand what their 'customers' really want because they're obsessed with the bottom line.
to be honest, Pirelli could make a tyre that would last 100 laps. Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault and Cosworth could make powerful 500mph V16 engines The teams could have crazy looking aerodynamics The cars could be driven by robots. but where is the fun in that? 'Formula' 1 is called so because of the formula of regulations and limitations imposed to keep racing safe and competitive. If you dont like the rules then tough luck.
Don't know If anyone has already mentioned this but I found some rather interesting stuff about Pirelli and how they went about setting up the tyres for this year. Firstly the supposed deadline for the tyre specifications to be confirmed for the following season is Sept 1 according to the FIA, Pirelli were either given more time or chose to delay when they would announce the tyre changes altering them by October not September. Then there is this article here http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/102119/ What happened between September and October that made Pirelli change the ethos from 'tweaking' to big changes in the tyres I don't believe that they were pressured into it I reckon that Pirelli saw races like Italy and were worried that the teams had got a hold of the tyres and thought that their 'product' would not be the talk of the town any more, now they are having to backtrack had we have been left with Sunday strolls instead of a Grand Prix. I just find it really odd why they changed their mind on tyres in a month and why they were able to submit the tyre specifications later than the deadline set out by the FIA.
I think this ^ is the key issue. I saw someone say "Why don't we go back to what we had last year" and it's key to note that for the last two years we've started out with ridiculously high degradation but by the end of the season we're back onto 1/2-stop races. Perhaps this year was just a step too far but Pirelli have just been doing what they're told all along.
It could all be a elaborate hoax, wait for people to start complaining that the tyres have been changed and then tell them you've done nothing..... but thats just me
Petr Hlawiczka ‏@hlawiczka 16m #F1 Critical surface temp. for 2013 tyres seems to be 160°C. Once you are over, done: no way to get them back to work again after cool-down.
