Sebastian Vettel believes the reason blistering was seen on some tyres during testing last week was because rival teams were trying to influence Pirelli’s choice of compounds for this year’s races.
“I think it’s quite normal that, after the first days of testing, every team tries to get the tyre supplier in the direction that suits their car best,” said Vettel when asked if blistering might be a real issue in the upcoming season.
“We think Pirelli has done a good job with their compound selection,” he added.
Vettel also dismissed concerns over the race pace shown by Ferrari’s rivals in testing, pointing out they weren’t conducted in circumstances which were representative of a real race. Some teams used only the medium compound tyres for conducting race simulations, whereas in a real race they are required by the rules to use more than one type of compound.
“Our competitors – Mercedes and Red Bull – used one type of tyres for their race distance simulation,” pointed out Vettel, “which is something you can’t do in a grand prix.”
“This has an impact on the strategies and ultimately on the result.”
Pirelli’s Mario Isola said on Friday that although some teams had only used medium tyres during their race simulation they had conducted long runs on softer tyres separately.
“They were making long runs with many different compounds because they knew the selection only yesterday, last night. Obviously they had a draft but they didn’t know if we were going to confirm the selection or not.
“So they tested medium more than last year but they also tested soft, super-soft. We found long runs on more or less all the compounds, not the hyper-soft.”
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Jere (@jerejj)
13th March 2018, 17:54
Mind games.
nase
13th March 2018, 18:29
Have to say that Vettel’s theory sounds plausible. During the second week of testing, a few commenters, including myself, remarked that the wear patterns on Mercedes’ tyres looked atypical for Barcelona, leaving the impression that there might be sone degree of purpose to it. Vettel’s explanation offers a plausible reason that would be consistent with tyre politics in the recent past. Of course, his comments are no exception to this.
David BR (@david-br)
13th March 2018, 18:52
I’m pleased you included the last sentence.
stjs16
13th March 2018, 19:59
+1
Kingshark (@kingshark)
13th March 2018, 18:20
Pirelli should just let the teams choose the tyres they want to bring to each circuit. If Mercedes can’t make the hypersoft last around Australia while Ferrari can, then so be it.
Also, get rid of the mandatory stop rule.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
13th March 2018, 19:10
@emu55 Not mediums, I heard that the softs and the ss picture above were blistering, but yes that’s what’s he’s saying. @kingshark I agree and with nase, anyhow I think anyone including Ferrari is still going to try to persuade the manufacturer to choose a root that suits their car the best, change the tyre construction and compound philosophy.
KGN11
13th March 2018, 23:00
The rumours that Mercedes are having tyre issues is false. On the first day of the second test, yes you could see blisterings on Bottas’ softs, that was it. They’ve no issues and that’s evident by the amount of US they’ve chosen for Australia.
SparkyAMG (@)
14th March 2018, 13:00
The fact that it was reported that Bottas was lighting up the rears whilst running through the pit lane also points towards Mercedes deliberately pushing the tyres to the point of blistering.
Whether this was for testing or political reasons is something only they’ll know, but you can usually assume that anything displayed by the teams in public will always have a political element to it.
Larry Dean
20th March 2018, 18:43
They had to select their tyres well before Barcelona testing. So at the time of tyre choice they did not know how good would they fare on the softer end of rubber. IMHO they would choose differently if their tyre choice was after the testing.
Kenny Schachat (@partofthepuzzle)
13th March 2018, 20:04
F1 won’t eliminate mandatory pit stops. They are there to put more excitement in the race and provide strategy options that can potentially make the racing more interesting. Without it there would be too many processional races where the leaders just jump out out in front and pound around for the entire race.
Fans often site the bygone eras in F1 where there were less predictable outcomes and lesser teams could sometimes steal a win, etc. But that was almost always due the extensive reliability problems on the fragile cars back then. It was a very common occurrence for cars to have failures while a leading most of the race, giving a golden opportunities for others. It made for great excitement but I don’t think F1 can turn back the clock on technology and make the cars more fragile.
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
13th March 2018, 20:42
@partofthepuzzle Actually that would be easily done for once: Introduce spec bolts. The 2 £ kind.
Kenny Schachat (@partofthepuzzle)
13th March 2018, 21:49
Hah, hah, great idea! Esp, for the oil tanks. Nothing like a few little greasy puddles on the tracks to even the odds.
StefMeister (@stefmeister)
14th March 2018, 1:27
@partofthepuzzle
That is just as likely to happen with mandatory stops as it is without them.
But the mandatory stops & the way tyres in general are controlled actually give teams/drivers less strategy options & in a way make things less interesting.
Dropping the mandatory stops & giving teams/drivers access to the full range to run how they want, That would provide real strategy options, Makes strategy less predictable & make things far more interesting.
Having the mandatory stops, Having the high-deg tyres & offering teams a limited choice of compounds more often than not forces everyone down the same route. For all the talk of the way things are providing strategy options, It actually more often than not forces everyone down a very similar route anyway…. Especially with the undercut been as powerful as it now is due to the artificially generated high degredation.
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
13th March 2018, 22:25
@kingshark agree. I have been saying the same for a while, let’s team chose freely then adapt the tyre selection based on overall usage (drop some tyres if none is using them).
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
13th March 2018, 22:44
@jeanrien why not give all teams an equal stock of all tires and let them decide what to bring where?
bosyber (@bosyber)
14th March 2018, 6:32
That’s easy @mrboerns, then Pirelli would have to make and ship more tyres to all the races. Since taking the ‘not used’ and shipping them on takes extra time and money, logistics would be difficult too; those have to be discarded. Lots of waste and extra costs. Teams would pay a lot more for them than currently.
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
14th March 2018, 7:37
@bosyber i Think You missunderstood me. Each team gets a fixed amount of Tyres per season and per compound. Pirelli knows exactly what to produce. The Teams can use their alotement in whatever Way they please and simply bring along what they like. But If they run out of ultras by monaco, they have to do without for the Rest of the season.
Pirelli just Brings a Full alotement of inters and wets per race
bosyber (@bosyber)
14th March 2018, 9:53
That’s indeed not what I understood from your post @mrboerns! But because ahead of the season, and testing, the teams don’t know how the tyres will be, and how their cars work on them, I think that would still end up with giving all the teams some tyres that just won’t be used at all, and need to be destroyed, in addition to the team having less strategic choices (because they have less info) leading to a lot of them having to go quite conservative. Still, might be interesting to think about it some more.
MrBoerns (@mrboerns)
14th March 2018, 10:09
Well, not if you get the overall amount right. You See, if You were to only go for soft/ss/us/… you’d simply run out and would Need to Complete the season on hard and medium, using those up in the Process. Unless there was to be a substantial amount of rain you should end up with less ‘tyre overhead’ Than You do now.
Also You would, at the same time, allow for Strategic freedom for the single weekend, while adding a whole new dimension in the overall season strategy.
For example, the frontrunners would have to be rather sensible in order to favour their shot at a Championship. However, noone could stop force india from going for a weekend of glory by applying a completely bonkers us/us/hs/us strategy. The more i Think about it the more it is the best Thing ever. Might want to add a free set per FP session provided by pirelli to avoid tyrehogging by not running in FP at all if that proved to be an issue.
Steven Robertson (@emu55)
13th March 2018, 18:50
I don’t understand vettels point, is he implying that Mercedes and Red Bull were wrecking medium tyres so that Pirelli would choose softer compounds for the grand prixs?
Ryan
13th March 2018, 19:06
They were ruining the softer compounds so that they would take the mediums & harder compounds to the races instead. Can see in the banner picture supersofts on a Mercedes.
Gabriel (@rethla)
13th March 2018, 19:15
Rather the other way around.
Steven Robertson (@emu55)
13th March 2018, 19:21
Ah, I see. I don’t know if I agree with him, I thought they were doing long stints on the mediums to test the engines
Mick02
14th March 2018, 2:29
It actually makes a lot of sense. I kept reading people saying the Mercs were doing long rolling burnouts in the pitlane for no apparent reason. Makes sense that if they want the softer tyres to look bad, they’d just shred them doing burnouts and then hope people just pick up on press photos of the ruined tyres and think “oh no, Pirelli have made cheese tyres again”, and pressure Pirelli into bringing harder compounds that might suit Mercedes more.
bosyber (@bosyber)
14th March 2018, 6:50
It may make sense that way @Mick02, or perhaps they were checking how much heat those tyres can take for other, hotter races, since they were there to prepare for the whole season, not just the Barcelona race. After all, didn’t they have problems last year to get the tyres in the right window, overheating thm too easily when it was warm?
Maybe a bit of both.
Balue (@balue)
13th March 2018, 19:08
It’s like cheating in a way..
David BR (@david-br)
13th March 2018, 23:44
Because Pirelli lack the technology to count how many laps the teams have done on the tires?
I’d guess that they can calculate pretty accurately what the teams have been doing with each tire and evaluate accordingly. The main thing Vettel’s comment reveals are the tires Ferrari want.
Ed Marques (@edmarques)
13th March 2018, 19:37
Shots fired this early??
Maranello must have some problems then.
Fezile
13th March 2018, 20:17
Lol, i think you have your finger on it. I am a Scuderia fan though and hope they are not in trouble.
Makana (@makana)
13th March 2018, 20:25
Doesn’t add up; and for Australia Merc took the most ultrasofts!
Nissan Skyline.
13th March 2018, 20:04
Not as bad Hamilton’s trumpish style comments earlier this week. MMGA.
W (@vishnusxdx)
13th March 2018, 20:22
Well, they were using the slowest tyre… so what’s the problem with the then? You should worry because their normal pace would be a lot better, seeing the delta between the tyres.
Asanator (@asanator)
14th March 2018, 14:37
Not if they can’t get the stint length out of the softer tyres!
KGN11
13th March 2018, 22:57
Hold on, did they not report last year that Vettel’ was heavily involved with the tyres Pirelli supplied last season?
JC
14th March 2018, 0:14
Says the driver who drives for the team with a VETO OVER THE RULES OF THE SPORT.
Hmmm. Yeah.
Mick02
14th March 2018, 2:34
Lots of people were reporting Mercedes doing long rolling burnouts in pit lane. If you find better photos you’ll notice the fronts look fine while the rears are shredded. They must have had a reason to keep doing this during testing, and I think vettel’s explanation actually makes a lot of sense. I have no idea why else they’d be purposely destroying rear tyres with long burnouts.
Patrickl (@patrickl)
14th March 2018, 7:49
because there was snow?