Pirelli avoids hard tyres for British Grand Prix

12 comments on “Pirelli avoids hard tyres for British Grand Prix”

1. 

   FJBH10 (@fjbh10)
   18th May 2017, 10:48

   Might there be a chance of the fastest Post-Bridge lap being broken?
   1. 

      Deej92 (@deej92)
      18th May 2017, 12:55

      Almost certainly*

      *British summer dependent!
2. 

   Ola Ray
   18th May 2017, 11:27

   Supersoft/Soft and medium… that means its a one stop race unless if it rains…
3. 

   spoutnik (@spoutnik)
   18th May 2017, 11:37

   We want harder tyres that we can push on!
   We want less durable tyres! Tyres are way too hard!
   We want square tyres!
   We want roller skate tyres!
   No more tyres, we want hoverboards!
   1. 

      Robert McKay
      18th May 2017, 13:03

      Surely there must come a point where Pirelli thinks “what’s in this for us? We can’t win”.
      1. 

         Blastermaster
         18th May 2017, 17:46

         I’m guessing Pirelli would be praying for a day when a winning driver mentions them in a positive light during a
         post-race interview….
   2. 

      Sven (@crammond)
      18th May 2017, 17:03

      I think ultimately they’d want tyres of the same nature as those that would be winning if there was an unregulated tyre war. The tyres at Spain weren’t too hard in the meaning of being too durable, but rather because it was impossible to reach the temperature operating window, and a stint with a cold tyre is just slow. An optimum tyre would be exactly at optimum temperature when pushed max out, something you’d have to engineer for each individual track (and weather conditions/track temps).
      1. 

         anon
         18th May 2017, 21:22

         @crammond, I would have to disagree with you about the Spanish GP, because it depended which team you were talking to when discussing whether they could or couldn’t get the tyres into the right temperature window.

         Red Bull complained, but they have also admitted to having a lack of rear downforce that makes it hard for them to get the tyres up to temperature. Conversely, Ferrari and Mercedes had noticeably less trouble in doing so given that their cars seem to have a better aero balance and are, quite simply, producing more downforce altogether. Horner alluded to exactly that situation after the race when he mentioned that the way that Red Bull were able to “work” the tyres on track was rather different to Ferrari and Mercedes because of the fact that their car had a different handling balance and slower performance than those two teams.

         The problem is that each team is going to have a different idea of what is the optimum tyre for their car due to the different performance characteristics, so a tyre that is optimal for one car will not be for another. It is especially marked when you have two teams – Ferrari and Mercedes – that have better chassis than the rest of the field, and those two teams were feeding performance data on the downforce that their cars would produce into Pirelli’s simulations of the 2017 grid.

         Even during the tyre war era, a tyre that might be particularly good for one team wouldn’t necessarily suit another – for example, Newey complained quite a bit during that era that Michelin’s tyres were effectively designed with Renault’s cars in mind and did not work particularly well with his cars. You’d pretty much have to optimise the tyres by car and by circuit in order to please everybody, which is not really a practical option.
         1. 

            Dom (@3dom)
            19th May 2017, 22:31

            But the “Hard” tyre was too hard for that circuit. This wasn’t team specific, it was just fact that no team could get it into the temperature “window” and so they all “voted with their feet”, and no team used that tyre because it was basically useless to them.
4. 

   Miane
   18th May 2017, 15:13

   The real problem is in the rules that are limiting the strategy factor. You can’t complete a race using just 1 harder tyre, why use them? The rule enforcement to change tyres converge everyone to use softer tyres and plays the same strategy.

   It would be nice to a good driver/car starting from the bottom and doing a 1 stop strategy (or don’t going to pit at all) and getting to good results.
5. 

   Josh (@canadianjosh)
   18th May 2017, 22:31

   Pirelli have delivered this year but now the hard compound is too hard and last too long? Give me a break.
   1. 

      F1 in Figures (@f1infigures)
      19th May 2017, 10:17

      No, it’s way too slow. Given that tire degradation is less this year the performance difference between adjacent compounds should also be smaller. In a race weekend the softest compound will always be used in both qualifying and race. The harder compounds tend to be slower in the race, so they will only be used in one stint and then usually only the middle compound is used. So the hardest compound won’t be used at all in the weekend, which is not a good thing.

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