Pirelli Strategy 2011

[WhiteBlue]

My main concern with soft tyres were marbles but now it appear that the pirelli tyres are relatively soft without using much oil. From what I read from the tests the debris from tyres is very dry and the track does not get rubbered in as much as it was usual with the Bridgestones.

[ringo]

I miss the bridgestones.

These marbles will just mess up the racing. Going off line will soil the tyres.

[raymondu999]

Right now, to me, it just looks like Pirelli doesn't have the same level of science and knowledge as the Bridgestones had. Pirellis have about the same level of grip, sure. But they degrade so fast! I mean, surely, if you're allowed to skimp on longevity, you can put more resources into grippiness? Right now it's the same tyres Bridgestone had, but with less life, IMO

[mx_tifoso]

Considering the short amount of time since development and testing started and that this is barely their first season I would give them the benefit of the doubt and just wait it out. Although the amount of marbles is trully excessive, even the cars are dirtier than usual, some barge boards just get covered in the stuff. Hmmm, I wonder if that affects the cooling at all? ... Probably just leads to more cleaning.

[CMSMJ1]

Do you guys not recall the problems Michelin had when they came back?

They had amazing grip, then they fell off a cliff with a graining phase and then they settled down.

I suspect the same for the Pirellis.

We have ben spoilt by conservative tyres and where you were all moaning that you wanted tyre stops and degradation, now it seems ot be on the cards you have bottled it!

Let's see what goes on before we judge eh?

[audifan]

stated policy from pirelli ....2 stops per race
more power to their elbow if they pick the right compounds to do that !
we might even have a position where the drivers who are easier on tyres can use 1 hard and 2 softs [ or even 1 stop ? ]and the others the other way round ;
also the ferrari looked fairly easy on tyres last year

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/2528 ... barcelona/

Modified compounds taken to Barca. (Just a quick congrats to Arsenal last night! )

How do teams go about adopting their cars to the tyres when they keep changing?

[audifan]

don't follow that jet , tyre performance changes continually with temperature /track condition etc
tyre compounding is just another variable , and the tyre manufacturer just has a guess at what will be the conditions at various races

doing what bridgestone did last year and taking an ultra conservative line is very bad in my view ...and even that didn't work in canada

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

don't follow that jet , tyre performance changes continually with temperature /track condition etc
tyre compounding is just another variable , and the tyre manufacturer just has a guess at what will be the conditions at various races

doing what bridgestone did last year and taking an ultra conservative line is very bad in my view ...and even that didn't work in canada

I agree that going conservative is bad.

However my point regards the compounds is this: Cars tend to be designed with a neutral balance starting point where possible, then knowing the characterisitics of the Tyre, teams dial in certain elements into the chassis(overtsteer etc) through set up change, aero tweaks and the like.

Its one reason why we have the mandatory weight distribution this year. Some teams would get lucky by hitting the jackpot with tyres, simply because the tyres are such an unkown quantity.

Now with the compounds being tweaked, any data teams have got from those compounds may be irrellevant dependant on what has been done.

[Ciro Pabón]

Those tyres degrade by design. They have to stop to change them by design. They have two compounds by design. Those marbles are designed and they cost a pile of shite, given the fact that studies, analysis and models went into their very existence. Who knows how many people at FIA we are paying with part of the cost of the tickets for those marbles to be?

Supposedly, we will be entertained by that. After all, it is almost impossible to overtake the six leaders, ain't it? So, they stop for some rear marker to show on camera and for you to doubt if it will be Hamilton, Alonso or Vettel. Wow, the shivers are running all over my spine...

So, do not complain, FIA is doing this for our own good. Move ahead, citizen, nothing to see here...

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

So, do not complain, FIA is doing this for our own good. Move ahead, citizen, nothing to see here...

No complaints Ciro,

Im asking the question. If Pirelli tweak compounds now, where does that leave teams who have reams of data on the other compounds?

[audifan]

well , I haven't been an insider for a very long time , so I get little direct feedback
but the impression I got at jerez was that the teams felt that pirelli had gone a little too far with the ultra compounding , and asked that it should be a touch more durable
seems to me better to change with a lot more testing still to go , rather than change during the season
and despite the fact that almost no ultra soft running seems to have taken place at jerez , all the teams should have very similar amounts of data on this tyre ....and if they haven't , they soon will have

[WhiteBlue]

Nobody seems to know the technical side of the changes. The Bridgestone tyres apparently used a lot more oily substances to make the tyres soft. They also supposedly used under curing to make a soft tyre which would finish vulcanization under race temperatures to "come back".

The Pirelli tyres in contrast are not leaving plastic debris on the track which fails to "rubber in" in the classical way. The debris seems to be dry and gets swept away by moderate forces like wind and aerodynamic turbulences behind cars.

There seems to be a lot of rubber debris off the racing line but it is unclear if it acts like the marbles known from the previous Michelin and Bridgestone compounds. I'm wondering if someone has done interviews with the teams about those changes and what they mean to the racing off the racing line.

To have these dry chunks of rubber break out of the tyres one would assume that the molecular structure would be tweaked to shorter chain lengthes. This would weaken the cross linked molecular structure of the cured rubber. Just an idea, but they must have used another trick than the previous suppliers to get the different effects.

[Ricky Bobby]

Good morning all, I've been reading this site for a year or two now & only just got round to signing up and posting!

I was just wondering if anybody else had picked up on the pirelli tyre allocations for the first four races, where they are bringing the hard and soft tyres (i thought they were meant to be going aggressive!). If I remember correctly, didnt Bridgestone bring the super-soft & medium tyres to Bahrain the last two years & they were snooze-fests - from what I understand Bahrain is not a 'tyre killer' track.

Do you think we will really see 2-3 stops in Bahrain or just another boring 1stop race?

[softtyre]

It looks like the car which will have a low wear with its tyres will have an adventage this season. So i think a change in the tyre composition during the season will be partial with some teams, and also the election of the compounds tyre sould be done for all the races now.