Poll on F1 tyre companies

[caretaker]

F1 should never have been considered relevent to the wider car industry, it's in no way relevent ! ordinary men should be looking in wonder at those beasts, not nodding sagely and confirming to the wife that "our merc's got that on too".

That's a fine sentiment but I'm more with Baretzky's school of thought. Race cars should be exciting and have mind boggling performance and next in line they should provide the manufacturers with a platform to develop the finest technologies that they will later use in their road cars. LMP1 is currently following this kind of philosophy and that is what it makes it so exciting for the technically minded and the engineers. F1 will regret their short-sightedness of pumping all the money into refining arcane bits of carbon fibre panels. If you provide manufacturers a nice platform they will bring tons of money and excitement to the sport. If you deny them any competitive advantage by doing a good job you will be left with geeky technology that nobody has any interest in. Technical forums like this will be populated by armchair aerodynamicists that have no idea of a Bernoulli equation and fanbois will fill the pages of this forum with their drivel.

Yes I agree about infinite twiddling with areo parts, also agree with your LMP1 train of thought, I would like to include Formula e as a beacon for appliying race tech to road car distilation.
But I gotta disagree when speaking of F1, I was 13 in 1992 and as i became properly interested in Grand prix the major factor for me was the unatainability of the thing, The tech at the time was awsome given computational constictions and I was hooked, Even when Mclaren launched the F1 road car and proclaimed It's a f1 car for the road, We all know it just wasn't
F1 needs to be exotic, exclusive and expensive, Cause kids now just walk past the tv, We need them to turn heads and say WHAT was that !.

We are way past warning"F1 may become just another race series".
So sorry to go so far O.T

[strad]

We are way past warning"F1 may become just another race series".

Already has boss...already has.

[WhiteBlue]

We are way past warning"F1 may become just another race series".

I'm also sorry that we have this debate which is a bit off topic here. But it is fundamental and if someone objects the mods can transfer it to another thread.

I agree with the view that F1 has gone into the wrong direction with regard to some issues. In my view it is particularly the engine freeze which was never meant as a way of life in F1. It was invented as a stop gap to prevent all teams to go bust in a spending race. Only that they transferred the race from engines to aerodynamics and emasculated the engine technology and development on the way. As soon as we have new engines that will stimulate inventiveness the spec is narrowed down to no freedom at all in the name of cost saving and the sorry result of all this standardization is frozen as soon as possible. That is totally against the spirit of motor sport IMO. In my view the constructors can spend half their development budget on engines and the other half on their beloved aero stuff if they want. What would the auto makers change if they had a chance? They would go variable vanes on the turbo, variable valves and perhaps better ignition systems. Those are all common technologies in road cars and new F1 implementations would find their way back into road cars very quickly if they are feasible. This is nothing that we should be concerned for when we think about the image of F1.

[Shrieker]

I remember being very impressed with Michelin's performance and longevity when they arrived in 2001. On some tracks they really made a difference, Imola springs to mind right away. And on most others they were pretty much even stevens with Bridgestone IIRC. Of course there were tracks in which Bridgestone excelled as well, but my point being, Michelin were really impressive for a newcomer. Eventually they f'ed up in 2005 indy, but none of the tire manufacturers were flawless in F1. Oddly, the most reliable F1 tyres in my mind were made by goodyear, but I only witnessed their era for 2-2.5 years. Maybe someone with more experience can shed light on their puncture-failure rate ? Regarding their performance, watching as a teenager back then it looked to me like they offered the same tires to every team -which was fair- unlike the bridgestone era for example.

[strad]

Damn WB we are agreeing more and more often.
The only problem I ever saw with the GoodYear product was that since they make so many racing tires and they are hand laid, that once in a rare while, you would get a bad tire. But ya know what? I haven't heard that in about the last 20 years and I think that is due to better testing procedures..x-ray and this sonogram looking thing and the like.