Thoughts on 2012 tyres?

[ubrben]

What is the answer?

Ben

Genuine performance differentiation.

The Pirelli-putty tires and DRS are nothing but band-aids employed by those who don't want to face the realities of F1. The fact of the matter is that the regulations are now so tight that the cars are all pretty much the same, and equal cars have a real hard time passing one another on-track.

I think it's hard for F1 to admit that all of the measures taken in the name of cost-cutting are strangling the sport to death. Restrictions, homologations, standardized components, these are all enemies of genuine performance differentiation. They're also expensive, and apparently it's more important to keep the sport cheap for the likes of HRT and Marussia than it is to keep the sport connected to its roots.

I tend to agree with you. As someone interested in (and involved in) vehicle dynamics, tyres and suspension, F1 is much too reliant on aero and I'd like to see that change.

My ideal car is something like a 1982 F1 car with big ground-effect tunnels and tiny front wings:



Ben

[xpensive]

Sadly, I think that image of the 126C is not the best of xamples, the year before that was xactly when the FIA started to hold back on technical innovation by banning the sliding skirts with full venturis, it took quite a driver to handle a 1980 BT49 or FW07.

[Jersey Tom]

My ideal car is something like a 1982 F1 car with big ground-effect tunnels and tiny front wings:



Ben

Good looking tires there.

[bhall]

[...] ditching the spec-tyre might be a good beginning?

100%

[...] F1 is much too reliant on aero and I'd like to see that change.

I don't necessarily see it that way. If the last couple of years have taught us anything, it's that aero isn't the Great Inhibitor of Overtaking the way it's often portrayed. Overtaking didn't increase, despite a wholesale shift in the aero formula, until Pirelli unleashed its wacky tires. (Yes, that coincided with the introduction of DRS, but we all have eyes.)

Beyond that, the teams appear to be hell-bent and determined to prevent the return of ground-effect downforce, as they kill that proposal every time it's made. So, now any attempt to reduce wing-based downforce would only serve to degrade the performance for which F1 is known.

My biggest fear for the sport is that fans by and large might become addicted to the gimmicks, if they haven't already. What happens after that? Artificially wet races?

On a personal level, I can't think of a reason why I'd want to follow a sport in which tires, wing flaps and other trickery are always the stars of the show.

[munudeges]

In order to give that performance differentiation, I believe that the technical regulations must be loosened up, ditching the spec-tyre might be a good beginning?

Not a bad suggestion. The racing wasn't half bad when we had genuine tyre differences and they were constantly being developed. I don't think you can have insatiable car development and a standard tyre. Doesn't fit to me. You get situations like Spa last year and limits being placed on cars and drivers. Schumacher was indirectly right on that score, but he obviously had other motivations.

The tyres are obviously the biggest variable to providing moderately exciting racing. Refuelling has been tried and it simply didn't work because everyone ended up doing the same thing and the driver and team in front could simply react to anything anyone did. We need more genuine variables and we need to open up technical development for the teams to give us more.

I'd like to see more strategy variation and tyre variety. I'd like to see it feasible so that one driver could sprint and do three stops with one compound where another driver could go for one stop. We don't see that right now because there isn't the variety of compounds and we have that daft rule about running both types of tyre.

[xpensive]

Problem is when one team gets all the attention from one of the suppliers, tailoring the tyres for a specific car, like Bridgestone to Ferrari and MS, but when Renault and Alonso got the same treatment from Michelin, MrM didn't like it that much, did he?

[Jersey Tom]

Problem is when one team gets all the attention from one of the suppliers, tailoring the tyres for a specific car, like Bridgestone to Ferrari and MS, but when Renault and Alonso got the same treatment from Michelin, MrM didn't like it that much, did he?

Ehhh it's not quite like that.

[Tim.Wright]

Not a bad suggestion. The racing wasn't half bad when we had genuine tyre differences and they were constantly being developed.

You have got to be joking. The last tyre war at the start of the 2000's coincided with the most boring years of racing I can remember.

[marcush.]

paul hembrey stated he is sure teams will switch to more bold strategy decisions when tyres are better understood this year and he seems genuinely surprised why all err on the conservative side with their tyre strategies all doing the same...
My thoughts exactly.

Schumi was angry with his crew in reality.....??

[munudeges]

You have got to be joking. The last tyre war at the start of the 2000's coincided with the most boring years of racing I can remember.

You must be 'misremembering' how that transpired. As X sort of indicated above you'd need to have rules put in place to ensure that all of a manufacturer's tyres were available to all of the teams they supply, which is where Ferrari's stranglehold on the Bridgestones fell foul. Once that was somewhat broken by rivals going with Michelin we had some fairly exciting, tyre dependent races, especially in 2005. We had similar races in the 80s where we had close finishes between people like Senna and Mansell at places like Jerez purely down to tyres differences.

[xpensive]

I can still recall the 1990 Phoenix GP with Pierluigi Martini qualifying the Minardi on the front row and Andrea de Cesaris with his Dallara in third spot, all thanks to the Pirelli stickies, no chance in the race of course but still amazing.

[bhall]

Two questions:

I didn't really start following F1 until mid-way through 2005, the year that mandated the use of only one set of tires throughout both qualifying and the race, so I have no idea why that rule was implemented. Why was it?

Also, what were the rules regarding qualifying tires when they were around?

I've lately been wondering if it would be a good idea to introduce a qualifying tire whose construction would be identical for every circuit and of which teams could only use one set per race throughout the entirety of qualifying. Such a tire a would have to be robust enough to last for up to three sessions, and it would have to be flexible enough to work on a very dynamic range of circuits. Qualifying would then tend to identify the best cars rather than the cars that make best use of tires.

[Jersey Tom]

I've lately been wondering if it would be a good idea to introduce a qualifying tire whose construction would be identical for every circuit and of which teams could only use one set per race throughout the entirety of qualifying. Such a tire a would have to be robust enough to last for up to three sessions, and it would have to be flexible enough to work on a very dynamic range of circuits. Qualifying would then tend to identify the best cars rather than the cars that make best use of tires.

I'm not sure it makes sense to have Q tires with no tire competition. A true qualifying tire lasts about 1.5 laps at best and the intent - from a tire company's perspective - is to get all your teams up as high on the time sheet as possible... rather than to have some "equalizing factor" among all the cars and all the tracks.

So for the thing to last 3 sessions is not remotely a Q tire. Nor do I really see the practicality in having one construction to cover EVERY track...

[bhall]

I didn't think my idea of a qualifying tire bore any resemblance to historical ones. That's why I asked about those rules.

It seems to me that the current crop of Pirellis were expressly designed to be the equalizing factor you described. The problem is that, from at least my perspective, they've gone too far and have forced drivers and engineers to adopt an endurance racing mentality for races that should probably have more in common with sprints. Not only that, the marbles strewn across the track make the racing line a tightrope from which any deviation is severely punished.

In relatively short order, we've seen tires designed to go the distance and then some, e.g., 2005, to tires that are already past their peak after two or three laps. Neither solution makes much sense to me. Absent tire wars, which I don't think are coming back anytime soon, I'm just trying to think of something that does make sense.

I do, however, see your point about tire companies likely being very reluctant to go along with such a plan. A qualifying tire with the consistency of something from the medium to hard range of the 2010 Bridgestones - you'd know better than I - followed by race tires with the appropriate balance of performance and durability would all but ensure a very low profile profile for the supplier.

[Jon]

Two questions:

I didn't really start following F1 until mid-way through 2005, the year that mandated the use of only one set of tires throughout both qualifying and the race, so I have no idea why that rule was implemented. Why was it?

I think it was basically done to try to stop Ferrari and MS' domination.