Max Verstappen’s chief concern with Pirelli’s current Formula 1 tyres is one area the manufacturer plans to improve next year.
Pirelli’s F1 chief engineer Simone Berra explained the work which has gone into the 2023 compounds and how that has been influenced from the feedback of drivers this season.Verstappen, a driver who prefers a precise front-end and a looser rear to his car, identified the lack of grip from Pirelli’s front tyres as a concern earlier in the year, saying at the Canadian Grand Prix about wanting “more front end”.
At the French Grand Prix the following month Verstappen went into more detail, saying “the main limitation” causing an understeer trait in this year’s Red Bull “has been the tyres”.
“Already from the get-go when we were in Bahrain you could just feel like all the time when you really want to carry a lot of speed in, probably due to the weight of the car and just the structure of the tyre, it gives up a lot mid-corner, which is not ideal,” Verstappen remarked.
“But that’s why as a team you have to work around that issue with the car to try to make the car turn a bit better. Which on some tracks of course is better and some tracks it’s more of a limitation just because of the layout. But I hope of course for next year something can be done [with the tyres].”
Red Bull have made changes to their car to produce a more satisfactory handling balance for Verstappen. Berra said that for next year’s tyres there will be more change to Pirelli’s front tyres than the rears.
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“We had some information that the front tyre is – let’s say the weakest axle at the moment is the front, so we worked a lot on the front axle structure,” he explained.
A stronger build of the tyre means a lower pressure is required for the tyre’s structure to hold rigidity. Teams can increase the grip level for cornering by increasing pressures, which reduces understeer, but a consequence of that is more weight transfer on the rear axle and therefore a greater tendency for oversteer.
“The new structure, with the new integrity test that we did on the front, gives us the possibility to decrease a little bit the front pressure,” said Berra. “So what we expect from next year, if the higher loads don’t change too much, it will decrease a little bit the front pressure.
“At the moment we have a big delta between front and rear and we would like to decrease a little bit this. So our intention and our target is to run at lower pressure on the fronts.”
Berra confirmed “the first target” of the 2023 tyres was “to decrease the level of understeer”, as with the current compounds “in low-speed corners, it seems that the front tyre is quite weak.”
“The problem is that even running too high pressure is not helping,” he added. “So with the new structure, it’s stiffer. That tends to give us more integrity resistance [so] we can go lower with the pressure and I think that tyre can work better.”
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Matt (@hollidog)
9th November 2022, 12:23
This should be decreasing, reducing front tyre pressure increases contact patch and sidewall flex, increasing temperature.
Tyler S
9th November 2022, 13:20
Yeah, not sure if he misspoke or was misquoted in the article, but I’ve never heard of a team increasing tire pressure to get more grip. Same reason why some teams were getting in trouble with exploding tires back in the mid-2010s: they were all running extremely low pressures (and even swapping left/right side tires) in search of more grip. Eventually that led to Pirelli/FIA increasing the minimum tire pressures.
theRealMax (@millionus)
10th November 2022, 8:18
Maybe this is the issue with pirelli, they don’t know up from down..!
Kevin C (@kev-f1)
9th November 2022, 14:00
Surely if Max (or any other driver!) wants more front grip, that’s in the power of the team to add a front wing adjustment?? Or are Pirelli going to do a custom tyre build just to satisfy 1 drivers driving style and upset the other 19 drivers??
baasbas
9th November 2022, 14:29
@kev-f1
Saying this as just-another-layman, but you’re over simplifying. If front wing was the only metric then they could also put on wooden tires and just add more front wing. But then we’d ignore camber, caster, toe, suspension, weight, balance, wheel base etc.. the list is probably a lot longer.
At the moment we have a big delta between front and rear and we would like to decrease a little bit this
This says it basically. They have a lot of data available and they see a difference they want to correct. Seems fair, the 18″ tire being new and all. Could be expected it needs tinkering. And at least one driver called them out for it and it seems they agree.
I don’t see the need to make up a story that isn’t there
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
9th November 2022, 14:41
My conjecture is that Pirelli was led to believe, as teams tried to fool everyone, that the cars were going to be 6s slower, by having less downforce, traction and rear slippage becomes more of a factor than front end grip, they wanted to make sure the rear tyre was not going to fall apart. The pressures still look high front or rear but at least I think we can say the move to a lower profile has helped Pirelli greatly, we haven’t seen any failures, their old tyres were embarrassing. Unfortunately tyre voodoo is still a thing, some teams have a much better handle than others but hopefuly removing tyre warmers might fix this.
MichaelN
9th November 2022, 22:19
@peartree This is the common theme; the teams feed Pirelli wrong (or more charitably; outdated) information, Pirelli makes tyres that aren’t really fit for purpose because they constantly have to balance performance with F1’s inane desire to have purposefully short-lived tyres, and then they have to resort to mandating minimum tyre pressures or even stint lengths like a few years ago. The result being that everybody mocks Pirelli for yet another failed set of compounds. I’m still not sure what they get out of their involvement with F1, but they apparently think it’s worth the trouble.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
9th November 2022, 14:30
@kev-f1 Leclerc does, regardless it should be better for racing, since you pose front grip in the wake of a car. Pirelli must have identified the front tyre was acting as the lowest common denominator, a performance ceiling. Frankly I just like that the new tyre looks better, you could 100% spot the new construction over the baseline.