Thoughts on 2012 tyres?

[snoop1050]

what are peoples thoughts on the tyres? is schumacher just releasing his frustration or could there be some truth in what he says?

to me it almost makes sense that hes racing to a delta time and not the speed of the car, i was browsing the laptimes yesterday and kimi , schumacher , hamilton and vettel all set there fastest time directly after the outlap on their last stop and then just seemed to go into tyre conserving mode.

and when you look at the laptimes of the cars throughout the race theres seems to be a large indication that people arent racing to the speed of the cars but instead to the speed of the tyres just look at the laptimes for the whole field


im sure some people prefer this artificial racing but is it really good for the sport? imo its not and i would rather see drivers like hamilton and alonso going all out on a charge for the whole race..

everything this year is just becoming to hectic and confusing for the sake of overtaking and the "show"

from what we have seen of F1 this year its easy to race to the speed of the tyres instead of the speed the driver and car are capable off.
you nolonger need skill to drive an f1 car with these tyres and all the pay drivers are just confirming it in my view.

[raymondu999]

it depends how you want to race I guess. You start to notice, really, that there are quite a few ways to tackle stints. Early last year Lewis seemed to be pushing the whole way - and you could see superfast laptimes at the start of stints which then dropped off - which in turn needed him to push to be competitive.

Alonso's method was interesting, I thought. He does a "controlled aggression" of sorts, which I think was most evident in Korea 2011. He would initially manage the tyres, and gradually push more and more. The result wasn't an equalling laptime, but he would gain maybe 0.05 or 0.10 per lap from his previous lap, balancing the tyre life against how much he's pushing.

Vettel did something similar I thought - except in reverse. He'd sort of lap consistently at first then start losing a tenth a lap towards the end of the stints.

Button seemed to manage his stints two ways - cleanly demonstrated in Suzuka, and India. If you looked at his Suzuka laptime, Button was intentionally keeping load off the car at the start, and he would just cruise at the start significantly slower. In Suzuka it was about 8 tenths to 1 second a lap that he was initially dropping back at the start, then he started reeling people in. In India however he switched to between the Alonso and Vettel styles, balancing tyre wear against fuel load beautifully. He did a string of 10 or so laps which were all 1:30.9 laps.

[mzivtins]

To be honest i think it is 50/50... Tyres have given a good mix, but may have gone a tad too far, Kimi only being able to challenge ONCE, Di Resta running a completely different race to Vettel had him move over to give the lead away... in terms of this weeked at Bahrain anyway.

Your fighting instincts would have surely told you to block and make Vettel fight for that position back, but the tyre strategy prevented that which is a great shame.

I think it makes for very messy races, teams all running different strategies end up together on the track but not really fighting for position. Staying behind a car will destroy your tyres quicker meaning your race could be ruined by having to pass through traffic, which is something MSC was so good at early on in his career.

So in that respect i Agree with MSC, given the tyres, and the tyres alone, we may see less stunning performances like Button at Spa in 2011, from the back to the front, such a sight to see!

I am looking forward to the European races as i feel the tracks are just plain better iin terms of extracting driver skill... who dares outbrake at Monza? pass on Eu-rouge? etc

Oops, i fear in a round about way i have just said 'These newer ciruits like MalayGP ChineseGP and BahrainGP are all pants' haha

[GrizzleBoy]

I think that when almost every decision comes down to tyres, it's just a bit too much.

How much downforce do you want?

Well it depends. The driver may only feel like the car needs x amount to go around the track as fast as he can, but he then needs to add more downforce than he needs so the tyres will actually not demolish themselves in a couple laps.

This leads to the car being slower not because the car or driver is slow through the lap, but because the tyres demand his vehicle be slower.

How hard do you push for this overtake?

Well I know that I'm faster than this guy in front of me, but he's been in clean air since the beginning of the race and I've just had my tyres literally melt because I had to work my way up to the front and simply driving behind another car melts my tyres.

It then becomes a decision of risking and overtaking chance, blowing it and killing my tyres, or just cruising behind the race leader and settling for good points in second when you know you could take him if simply racing for position was what the game was about.

Do I start the race on the options or primes and how do you set the car up? Well in P3 I felt really good on the options and I've just qualified high up with them.

Then race day comes, temperature changes by two degrees and all of a sudden you're going nowhere because the operating windows are so painfully small and your setup doesn't have enough downforce to stop the tyres graining/shredding themselves.

It then becomes a guess/luck of the draw when clouds in the sky can ruin your race setup.


I don't know, it just seems like way too much of the actual racing is being decided off of the racing track due to the tyres.

[Speedster]

I was thinking about opening a topic about the tires too. In the three dry races of this year we have seen the front runner moving away from the field, untouchable, for a big part because he can nurse his tires for the entire race, in clean air and without having to push to overtake.

Also, the field is very close. I'm sure the cars are very close to each other too, qualifying proves this, but part of the explanation is also that drivers are just all going as fast as they can without ruining their tires.

When refueling was banned, the argument was that it would improve overtaking on the track. This didn't materialize in the beginning as the tires were very durable and F1 cars will always be difficult to overtake. As a result KERS was added (I think KERS is a good tool actually, it makes sense from all perspectives), DRS was added (one can argue that this is a compensation for the dirty air of the car in front, I'm still not sure if I like the tool as it feels artificial) and the tires are now made to last for 20 or so laps. What's the difference between this and the refueling era? I'm not so sure, as changing positions are still primarily determined by race strategy. Many of the passes we see today are not car-to-car battles, but good tire versus bad tire battles and as such not really overtakes, but just a quicker car driving past a slower. Real battles don't seem to be possible, judging by the first couple of races where Raikkonen had to back of in Bahrain after one attempt and Perez said his tires were basically gone after one attempt too. As a result, all we hear before, during and after the race is talk about how to treat the tires.

Maybe my biggest gripe with the current situation is the nasty side-effect of this tires: the marbles coming off during the weekend make it absolutely impossible to drive anywhere but on the driving line, making overtaking very tricky indeed.

With all this said, strategies still don't differ that much, because of the strict operating limits of the tire and we see everyone going for a three-stop.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to improve the tires a bit, to make them last say 25 or 30 or so laps and reintroduce refueling?

[mzivtins]

I was thinking about opening a topic about the tires too. In the three dry races of this year we have seen the front runner moving away from the field, untouchable, for a big part because he can nurse his tires for the entire race, in clean air and without having to push to overtake.

Also, the field is very close. I'm sure the cars are very close to each other too, qualifying proves this, but part of the explanation is also that drivers are just all going as fast as they can without ruining their tires.

When refueling was banned, the argument was that it would improve overtaking on the track. This didn't materialize in the beginning as the tires were very durable and F1 cars will always be difficult to overtake. As a result KERS was added (I think KERS is a good tool actually, it makes sense from all perspectives), DRS was added (one can argue that this is a compensation for the dirty air of the car in front, I'm still not sure if I like the tool as it feels artificial) and the tires are now made to last for 20 or so laps. What's the difference between this and the refueling era? I'm not so sure, as changing positions are still primarily determined by race strategy. Many of the passes we see today are not car-to-car battles, but good tire versus bad tire battles and as such not really overtakes, but just a quicker car driving past a slower. Real battles don't seem to be possible, judging by the first couple of races where Raikkonen had to back of in Bahrain after one attempt and Perez said his tires were basically gone after one attempt too. As a result, all we hear before, during and after the race is talk about how to treat the tires.

Maybe my biggest gripe with the current situation is the nasty side-effect of this tires: the marbles coming off during the weekend make it absolutely impossible to drive anywhere but on the driving line, making overtaking very tricky indeed.

With all this said, strategies still don't differ that much, because of the strict operating limits of the tire and we see everyone going for a three-stop.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to improve the tires a bit, to make them last say 25 or 30 or so laps and reintroduce refueling?

great points made everywhere in this thread!

I agree with increasing the tyres general performance but maybe not by lap distance in total, but maybe having them stay at their best for longer within their inteded lifespan?

Say maybe now you get 7-8 really good laps in a tyre that lasts 20 laps... (these are just guesses to make a point btw)
how about making that 17-18 good laps out of 20?

I know this sounds so thickheaded but why are we seeing drivers drive on the limit for only a small fraction of each tyre stint? it proves MSC's points he made to Pirelli this weekend... why can they NOT push the car to the limits for the majority of the race? it's really not f1 then!

[snoop1050]

i doubt they will ever reintroduce refueling its a pitty as i used to love watching people on a 3-4 stop race going all out like hungary 98.

one thing you notice when you watch formula one clips on youtube from the 90s is how alive the cars looked and you could instantly tell when a driver was ringing every milimetre out of a car and taking it to the edge.
i cant remember the last time i saw an f1 car look alive evertyhing seems so sterile and under control these days and even hotlaps in quali dont look a driver is giving it everything anymore.

people used to say it was 80% car and 20% driver imo its now
65% car , 30% tyres and 5% driver that contributes to the laptime

[MSC07-JCGX]

in 2010 bridgestone made tyres that could last the whole race disance with no refuelling i think and with the rule of having to use both compounds, so when everyone pitted they remained more or less where they started but now with pirelli the tyres are restricting the drivers to fight wheel to wheel and to push forwards. without refuelling pirelli were ask to make the tyres degrade to force teams make more pit stops 2-3, i think they've gone opposite to bridgestone which which the performance of the cars are so close with kers and drs i think pirelli should make the tyres last longer stints and not degrade as much so drivers can really go for it in quali and the race.
Merc might have a little more deg but all teams could only push for a few laps then conserve there tyres until the next pit stop or checkered flag. i think schumi sees that if you do push to catch the next car by time you do get close enough to fight you'll have no tyres. i think pirelli have done a good job and the gap between the tyres is smaller but theyve made the tyres degrade a bit too quickly. they need to find a balance so that drivers can push in the race but also making them last. if say a michael carefully he'll make the tyres last about 10-12 laps or more but if he does push the tyres will go in about 6-7 laps making him pit early and dropping back. plus if other teams could push im sure it will still be close against the teams.

[meves]

Another issue I have with the tyres is they seem to have a limited optimal operating temperature which no team can consistently achieve. The teams don't (yet) seem to understand how to get the car into the window it and maintain that temperature regardless of the track temperature. McLaren seem to have got it working when the temps are low, Red Bull when temps are high and Merc somewhere in between... I would prefer a more consistent tyre that had better longevity, durability and working window and a total cliff on performance but I'm not yet sure that Pirelli understand well enough how the compounds will work at each circuit to be able to give us that even if they wanted too.

It seems like the falsest F1 championship for years at the moment. With the tyres issues combined with the substandard coverage by BBC (slightly off topic) is really putting me off and I've watched F1 since the mid 80's.

[kooleracer]

I am really starting to dislike F1. This is not what the drivers signed-up for. Setting a Quali lap of 1:32:6 and doing race pace of 1:40:00, whats the fun about that? I like to see the old days, with refuelling and bridgestone tires. Where the speed of the driver makes the impact and not how good a particular car handles tyre deg.

MSC is a 100% right, i think Hamilton Alonso Webber would also agree on this fact. The real racers are being punished to race there car thats crazy. I hope the FIA do something about this nonsense for 2013. Because this is not F1, F1 is a formula that has to reward the quickest driver and quickest car. But nowdays it is rewarding the car the can handle the tyres the best. The driver input is minimal, as rosborg commented only to drive the car to 60% of its potential. Any F1 driver on the grid can do 1:38 lap. I want to see drivers being pushed to the limit every single lap.

Nowdays Sepang isnt even a challenge anymore, in the old days drivers would be totally exhausted at the end of the race. Last year Vettel jumped out of his car, without showing any sign of fatigue. That means the drivers arent challenged anymore. Please bring back Michellin or Bridgestone because the artificial race bores me to dead every sunday....

Nowdays you even see drivers moving out of a fight because, defending his position would mean he would kill his tires that really ridicolous. I am not blaming the drivers but thats not racing. Giving a way places because if you fight for position you will end up smoking you tires. the whole point of racing is fighting to defend or improve your position.

Pirelli killed F1, DRS is good enough. Hope more drivers start the join MSC to protest against this crazy idea of the FIA and Pirelli.The tires should be able the handle a car thats on the limit for 15 laps, and only showing a deg of 2 sec max. during the hole stint. This would create beatiful racing and battle between drivers. Because these tyres dont allow close racing because of the overheating problems.

In one sentence:

Pirelli is making F1 to easy!

[Maelstrom]

Judging from Pirelli's response to MSC's statement I doubt they tink anything needs to change or its going to change.

[banibhusan]

It just boils down to a simple question. How good the racing was in 2010?

If you look back at 2010 season, every single team, driver and fan criticised the tyres because they could virtually last the whole race. The only overtaking you would see is at the start of the race or may be pitstops(which were just one or rarely 2). And that's it!!

You can argue to bring back the refueling, but with the current cost restriction, it's clearly not possible. Well racing back in the 80's were much more fun without refueling. They didn't have to save the tyres. They were just pushing to the limit all the time. What has made the difference? Yes, it's aerodynamics, ground effect, bla bla bla!! Limit that and you can have good racing again.

[kooleracer]

It just boils down to a simple question. How good the racing was in 2010?

If you look back at 2010 season, every single team, driver and fan criticised the tyres because they could virtually last the whole race. The only overtaking you would see is at the start of the race or may be pitstops(which were just one or rarely 2). And that's it!!

You can argue to bring back the refueling, but with the current cost restriction, it's clearly not possible. Well racing back in the 80's were much more fun without refueling. They didn't have to save the tyres. They were just pushing to the limit all the time. What has made the difference? Yes, it's aerodynamics, ground effect, bla bla bla!! Limit that and you can have good racing again.

No racing was boring because of the dominance of Red bull with there blown-difusser.And the lack of pace that Ferrari and MGP showed only McLaren was able to challenge red bull at particular races. That had nothing to do with Bridgestone.

[gonzo_sbz]

I agree with MSC! 2012 version of Pirelli are too shortlived. If drivers not are able to push to the limit for more than a lap, what is then the whole point of the pinnacle of motor racing? A competition in being able to managing tires best isn´t what i´m intrested in! I´m intrested in motor racing and it´s racing I want to se! Drivers on top of their skills and using 100% of what the car can deliver. Now the tires are the bottleneck!

[SiLo]

The tyres are just stupid. There is excitement but it's just not the same. It all boils down to being able to manage tyres and you never see anyone really racing hard anymore. Refuelling made things much more entertaining, and qualifying with fuel on board was even better. I used to love watching Alonso smash in a quick lap and turn out to be on a 3 stopper. The DRS in my opinion would of been enough, with refuelling and better tyres. Can you imagine 2007/2008 with DRS? Would of been an astonishing year!