e30ernest wrote: ↑27 Jan 2022, 07:04
This is off topic now so this will be my last response to this tangent:
Ryar wrote: ↑27 Jan 2022, 06:50
The only reason there was blistering in Spain with thicker tread was because of the newly laid tarmac. It was overplayed to show, everybody had problems with normal tread tyres, which was not the case for others on other tracks! But Mercedes had problems almost everywhere, other than the tracks where thinner tread was used.
Then why didn't everyone else protest this in 2018?
They did in 2019 (RB, Ferrari and Haas namely) but the majority of the teams welcomed the change so it was never overturned.
Isola also denies the thinner tread was beneficial to Mercedes alone:
"In Barcelona we had a race where Mercedes was dominating," he explained.
But then we had the in-season test after the race and Sebastian [Vettel] tested both the normal tread and the thinner tread and his comment was the thinner tread is better. His words, not mine.
So, we had Barcelona where it was clear that the thinner tread was better – I’m not talking about Mercedes.
In Paul Ricard we had a race with some situation that are not telling us that one car was a lot quicker than the other. In Silverstone Mercedes didn’t win the race.
So it’s difficult to say that the thinner tread was giving a clear advantage to one car or another.
Mario Isola was still talking about Barcelona in that article, which I already said what happened. Every team struggled with thicker tread in post race testing because of new tarmac.
In Silverstone Mercedes didn't win because Vettel got a better start, despite Hamilton pole and then Hamilton spun from Kimi contact and was plum last. Even then, he finished second!
Other teams in France is irrelevant as the point is, Mercedes didn't struggle in these GPs. It's not about if other teams were benefited or not, but Mercedes certainly benefited with the change of compound. Again, their tyre problems vanished with new compounds and not because of Allison (original point of debate).