Inconsistencies in Pirelli tyres

[stewie325]

The tires are bad, yes.

But I have even less trust in Pirelli's process for setting tire pressures.

It's not very transparent, and can create swings in performance across teams.

There should be historical data about what tire pressures were used at each race, so we can understand how that affects different teams. Likewise for their choice of compounds.

[mendis]

So, what are people suggesting, that the quality control from Pirelli is terrible and all tyres aren't equal, or are drivers getting tyres that are all equally bad?

As Hollus indicates it's very possible imo that quality control hasn't become worse / tyres aren't any more inconsistent. But the field spread has condensed rapidly over the past 3 years, and to an extreme degree over the last 12 months. The effect of any perceived inconsistency will then be magnified.

Perhaps in light of smaller field spread pirelli should therefore improve QC

I am sure there is more to it than just field getting bunched up. Year over year, Pirelli is churning different compounds and the tyre pressures are going thorugh the roof. But the end result has remained the same. Never in the history of the sport, an outlap was such a precision science that drivers have to work with surgeon's precision to take care of the tyre to go for a qualifying lap. We don't hear anything other tyre all through the weekend. It's as if we have gotten used to hearing tyres every lap, every session and every weekend.

The cars have gotten slower and slower since 2019. They simplified front wing and took loads of time off the cars. Then for 2021, they decided to cut out floor and cars lost time. Then came ground effect cars, which were even slower. 2024 times are almost 2 seconds slower than 2020. Cars have gotten heavier, but are not putting anywhere near as much stress on tyres that 2020 cars were. Yet, Pirelli keeps jacking up tyres pressures with an excuse of safety. Imagine if they didn't do any change to 2019 cars and up until now if they had developed those cars, these Pirelli's would have barely managed to complete half a lap with that kind of downforce.

They have proved beyond any reasonable doubt that they are incapable of producing quality goods. Now they are at a stage where drivers and teams doubt if the sets they are using are even the same. They behave so funny that at some venues, one compound becomes totally useless. Teams don't even want to touch it. In some venues, a medium or a hard would be faster than the softs.

[GrizzleBoy]

Can it be that that used to be 3 tenths of lap time variation set to set, and used to cost you 1 position, is now 3 tenths of variation set to set, and costs you 4 positions or a Q2 exit?

Given that weve had quali sessions where almost the entire top ten were within a couple tenths its very possible.

At which point, this is not F1. Were playing pirelli lottery then.

Hundreds of millions in development, thousands hours in the sim, god knows how much time spent evaluating whether upgrade paths are correct etc etc etc, just to be relegated to whether Pirellis manufacturing tolerances are acceptable or not?

It's speculation of course, but if that really is the case then Pirelli dont deserve to be in F1.

Unless this is exactly what theyve been asked to do and FOM are quite happy with the results.

[Vanja #66]

RB have no issue with tyres you say?

Absolutely not, they designed the car more towards Q than RB19 and this cost them something with deg management in the race

[dialtone]

My humble ignorant opinion is that having 5-6 different compounds is not the way to go (do they have C0 this year?)

To get 5 compounds you arrange the temperature windows of the tires to have massive overlaps and little differences:

C1 110-140°C
C2 110-135°C
C3 105-135°C
C4 90-120°C
C5 85-115°C

There are 5 C differences on the ranges from the tires and the operating range on each tire is just 25-30C. When your ranges are so tight, the car balance can easily shift the operating window.

If I were FIA I would analyse this and attempt shrinking the range back to 3 compounds.

[Vanja #66]

My humble ignorant opinion is that having 5-6 different compounds is not the way to go (do they have C0 this year?)

To get 5 compounds you arrange the temperature windows of the tires to have massive overlaps and little differences:

C1 110-140°C
C2 110-135°C
C3 105-135°C
C4 90-120°C
C5 85-115°C

There are 5 C differences on the ranges from the tires and the operating range on each tire is just 25-30C. When your ranges are so tight, the car balance can easily shift the operating window.

If I were FIA I would analyse this and attempt shrinking the range back to 3 compounds.

Few years ago there were 7-8 tyres in the range, it's good they've at least cut that down to 5. If anything, they need to introduce a C6, another soft in the range, Monaco was ridiculous and so was today with Sainz and Hamilton doing almost 50 laps on Hards. Though I think even this C1 is too much, either go softer on the whole range or at least introduce C6

[pob]

Pirelli have forgotten that they are meant to choose a tyre range which leads to more than one stop in the race. They go ridiculously conservative on both the tyre compound selection and tyre pressures because it makes it less likely they will get bad press.