Alexander Albon expects tomorrow’s sprint race in Shanghai will be dominated by tyre management.
The Williams driver will start the race from ninth on the grid, one place outside the points. However he says drivers will have to take it easy to keep their tyres in good shape for the 19-lap race.“The tyres are not that easy to know what to do with,” Albon told the official F1 channel after sprint race qualifying. “The tyres, we’ve seen it this year so far, are very sensitive.
“Long corners like they are in China tend to make the tyres work a bit harder and it’s hard to get them into a good place. We’ll do some work overnight and try and get back stronger tomorrow.”
The Shanghai International Circuit has been completely resurfaced since F1 raced on it last year. Pirelli has brought its C2, C3 and C4 compounds – its second-hardest selection – and specified minimum starting pressures of 26.5psi at the front and 23psi at the rear.
During the single hour of practice before qualifying, several drivers complained they were struggling to make the front tyres last, especially the front-left tyre which is put under severe strain by the long, right-hand turns one and two. Albon expects that will force drivers to take it easy in tomorrow’s 19-lap sprint race.
“I think graining’s going to be a big talking point,” he said. “The fronts especially, which is what’s been hard in low-fuel as well, but in high-fuel it gets out of control.
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“So I think it’s going to be a very managed race, unfortunately. It might look a bit boring in the first few laps and then you’ll see a bit of a race towards the end.”
This article will be updated.
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Armchair Expert (@armchairexpert)
21st March 2025, 10:02
The Pirelli special.
Esmiz (@esmiz)
21st March 2025, 10:26
I will never quite understand the issue of the current wheels in F1. I understand that the tires must have a degradation so that there are race strategies and drivers have to stop to change them. But the problem is the “optimal operating window” and the continuous problems of graining and blistering. Is it so difficult to have tires that operate similarly over a wide temperature window? Maybe so, but I really don’t know because I’m not a tire expert and there is no other supplier to compare. In my opinion, if they want to make the races more interesting, this is one of the problems to deal with, it is not only that the dirty air prevents them from going close to the car in front, is that overheating or underheating the wheels greatly affects the performance, and any slight deviation from the normal lines or braking points is enough to overheat. This makes drivers (or rather engineers) not want to fight on the track because any fight on the track destroys the tires.
That, along with the problems of possible graining and/or blistering makes much of the race “management” rather than speed. I’ve seen WEC races where the drivers are more free to push the machine than in some current F1 races.
Bocky
21st March 2025, 10:52
@Esmiz: I totally agree with you. Tires are the number 1 problem in F1, since 15 years.
Doggy
21st March 2025, 13:20
The tires is not the problem per se. The main issue is the specs that FIA/F1 gives to pirelli. The manufacturer just follow the orders from the client
Doh
21st March 2025, 13:28
It’s still a pirelli issue. They choose how they go about following those orders
Doggy
21st March 2025, 13:50
What?? So let me get this straight: if your employer tells to follow an order and you consistently disobey it, then you expect to get rewarded?
Only out come is, if directions are not followed, then F1 boot will be hitting Pirelli’s back end.
I’m not fan Pirelle fan because they have had many malfunctions, but this tire performance is not on them
Alesici
21st March 2025, 15:41
Doggy, Doh’s comment about ‘how’ concerns the difference between mechanical wear and thermal degradation. With Pirelli’s tyres, any sustained pushing of the tyres will permanently destroy them – even if they had been pretty new. Whereas with mechanical wear (e.g. with Michelins), a period of pushing will eat into the tyres total stint life a bit, but if you follow that with a period of saving, you can potentially get back onto your original plan for wear over that stint’s length. The latter is a more cumulative effect. Sadly a lot of F1 fans who started watching within the last 15 years and don’t have time for non-Pirelli categories, e.g. WEC or Indycar, are blind to this horrific problem.
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
21st March 2025, 16:46
The thing with Pirelli is that while during there time in F1 the past 15 years they have been asked to produce tires to aim for certain targets in terms of number of pit stops or to try and have increased degredation levels but at no point during that time has anyone from the FIA or F1 ever actually told Pirelli how to go about achieving that.
Pirelli opting to go with tires that were more sensitive in terms of temperature and which suffered from thermal degredation was 100% a decision made by Pirelli and it has been the root cause of many of the more negative elements the Pirelli tires have suffered from and some of the negative affects tires have had on the racing in terms of having smaller operating windows and been prone to overheating when drivers are pushing hard in racing situations.
There were other ways Pirelli could have created tires that aimed towards creating 2 stop races without going down the thermally sensitive route but for mainly time & cost reasons they haven’t looked at the alternatives. Firestone in Indycar for example did look at alternative solutions and have come up with a tire that does feature marginally increased wear but which isn’t so thermally sensitive that it hurts the racing or causes any of the other adverse issues the Pirelli’s have suffered from.
S
22nd March 2025, 10:16
Are you a chemist?
Designing racing tyres (or any other tyres, for that matter) is not at all a single choice in technical direction. It’s a constant stream of compromises, which interact both constructively and destructively with each other – and vary under different conditions.
Tyres are well known to be the most complicated part of any car – racing or otherwise.
Indeed, neither F1 nor the FIA are telling Pirelli how to make tyres – however they are dictating what the result needs to be, and that really doesn’t leave many – if any – technical options beyond what they are actually doing.
Firestone, in your example, is making tyres for cars producing substantially less downforce (and for good reason) – it’s impossible to overstate how much of a factor this is. That gives them much more flexibility and scope for trading off certain characteristics against others.
Let’s be clear, Pirelli can and do make tyres as capable and suitable as any other manufacturer – including for F1 – but F1’s technical regulations, target letter and general approach make F1 one of the least desirable racing series to supply tyres for.
Remember that Michelin – the apparent favourite tyre manufacturer among self-described F1 fans – has openly rejected supplying F1 under the imposed conditions that Pirelli have agreed to. One of the many reasons for that is the negative response and reputation they know they’d get when the same complaints transfer to anyone else who takes on the contract.
S
21st March 2025, 13:27
Yes – especially so in F1, given the enormous physical demands the tyres must withstand primarily due to the high downforce they produce, and how soft (and therefore fast) F1 wants their tyres to be.
WEC tyres are designed for endurance and are much harder than F1’s. F1 (teams, drivers and the CRH) would deem similar tyres in F1 to be too slow and unresponsive.
F1’s actual biggest issue – in regard to tyres – is that the teams know too much about them. There’s far too much data telling them exactly how hard they can push at all times and how long they’ll last at a given pace. The management factor is mostly about executing their pre-designed tyre strategy.
One of the big reasons GP’s with wet or changeable weather conditions are usually the most interesting is that the teams can’t rely so heavily on data – they are forced to be more reactive and rely much more on the driver while making strategic decisions on the fly.
Much more like how it used to be before telemetry became such a big factor.
Chaitanya
21st March 2025, 14:09
Tyre complaints and rules around tyres are complaint very common in MotoGP as well. Seems like no matter what motorsport you look somethings never change.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
21st March 2025, 12:30
C’mon Alex, that’s not gonna get us out of bed at 3am to watch it…
Doggy
21st March 2025, 13:22
Lol no worries Ted, Croftty, and Co will make things up to trick people into thinking otherwise