2016 3 tire compound rules

[djos]

Yay, more Pirelli tire lotto!

[Sevach]

http://beta.autosport.com/news/report.p ... re-choices

Bahrain and China also with SS, S and M.

[BanMeToo]

It just occurred to me (though some in this thread have touched on it already) - do you all think that since the tire selections have to be made so far in advance it will be the teams choosing tires, rather than drivers? I would literally bet money that Mercedes will force the same # of each tire onto NR and LH next year. Which other teams might do this? Ferrari? Williams? Some midfield teams will probably want to hedge their bets and split strategies, but certainly Merc won't allow that.

Because it's not like a driver can say "Oh, I didn't like the Medium at this race, and in two weeks we're at a similar circuit so I'll bring fewer Mediums there." No. They will be locked in to a choice from 3 months ago. Kind of takes the potential fun out of this rule imo...

[pob]

We really need an f1technical article on this. Some journos are still getting the new tyre rules wrong.

Here's 3jawchuck's image edited to have the compounds for Australia and when the tyres will be used: (edit: they are the same for Bahrain and China too)


Last year Australia was an easy one-stop with very low wear and degradation on both the softs and mediums, although this was helped by a safetycar and cool conditions. Some drivers tried two-stop, which would have been faster if there hadn't been a safety car.
The optimum strategy for this year might be to forget the medium tyre completely and nominate six softs and four supersofts; two stop, ss-S-S.
For teams lower down, one-stop might be a good gamble, but it means committing to it with your tyre allocation as you will need to set up the car for all three compounds (tyre choice would be 3M/3S/4ss); I'm particularly thinking of Perez here.


Bahrain was a two stop with the soft as the favoured race tyre, so again ignoring the medium completely might be best with another two-stop ss-S-S


China is where it might get interesting for strategy as track conditions can greatly affect which tyre is best. Last year there was variation in strategy; Ferrari did very well on the softs. As with the other two races, I can see it being best to ignore the medium tyre here too though, yet again two-stop ss-S-S.



Being able to ignore the harder of the three compounds makes it easier to set up the car: it will only have to suit two tyre compounds rather than all three. If Pirelli want to encourage tactical diversity, they are going to have to be less conservative with their tyre selections and trust that the teams won't push the qualifying compound too much.

[godlameroso]

I disagree Bahrain favored the medium tire as we saw from Raikkonen.

[pob]

Hmm, you're right particularly as the temperatures cooled. Maybe I was looking at the wrong year.

[pob]

Here's how I imagine the tyre rules for Australia:

Pirelli says "righto chaps, the compounds available are Supersoft, Soft and Medium"
The teams say "what's that mean? We call 'em prime and option"
Pirelli says "you know... the red one, the yellow one and the white one... you'll have to call em something like option, prime and optimusprime just to confuse the fans as much as possible"
The fans say "aw, we wanted to see the new pretty purple one "
Pirelli says "sorry, we're scared it'll explode after half a lap so we're only using it at a couple of races"
The FIA then says "we've heard some F1 fans think that qualifying should be about cars being the fastest possible, so we insist that one of your 13 sets is the supersoft, and you have to save it for Q3! "
Pirelli then says "we insist that one of your sets is the Soft and one of the sets is the Medium. You probably should hold onto them, use em if you want in practice or quali, but if you do you're gonna find yourself short of tyres come raceday, so don't come complaining to us "
The teams then say, "psst, FIA, this is our secret selection of the ten other sets of tyres. "
Pirelli then gets to work making those tyres in Turkey. Maurizio says "Bonjourno Pirelli, would you mind making some tyres that are especially crappy for Mercedes like you did in Singapore? " But then the FIA throws all the tyres into three giant hats marked "M", "S" and "SS", and picks out each team's selection at random, so Maurizio's villainous plan is foiled . The tyres are loaded onto a boat which sails off to Oz.
During the race buildup the FIA says "ahem, these are tyres that everyone chose.... aren't Haas stooopid for picking 10 sets of the supersoft cos they don't know Pirellis disintegrate, hahaha "
Then fiiiiiiinally the season kicks off . After each practice session every driver gives back two sets of tyres from the 10 they chose. Maldonado looks miffed because he has to give back an unused set after crashing into the lake on the first lap.
We get to qualifying. Because it is soooo amazingly close this year with just 0.005 of a second covering the front to back row, every driver will have to use a new set of supersofts to get through each qualifying session. This pisses off Mercedes, as they had assumed they'd blitz the field so had only nominated 10 sets of soft tyres and promptly they get knocked out in Q1 .
We get to Q3. Pirelli says "hey, you guys who suck and didn't make it.... we feel sorry for you so you can have that set of supersofts you saved for Q3 for the race instead."
The FIA then says, "hey, you guys in Q3, we don't like you so we're gonna take those supersofts you saved for Q3 off you even though they're flatspotted and pretty much useless for the race now anyway. Also, you're gonna have to use those supersofts you used in Q2 to start the race on."
Vettel says "um... my Q2 set got punctured on the way back to the pits... it definitely wasn't from cutting corners or anything like that :-" " And then the FIA say, "don't worry Seb, you can swap 'em, as long as the replacement tyres are vaguely the same no one else will notice. "
Then the FIA reshuffles the grid by giving grid penalties to drivers it doesn't like .
It's finally race day . The FIA says "pit stops are fun and Pirelli want to show off their different coloured tyres so you all need to use at least two different compounds in the race. We don't care which two though."
Then there's a sudden thunder storm, so all those tyre rules end up not mattering and we have 10 laps on wet tyres behind the safety car before the teams decide that it's more fun to red flag the race and have a boat race in the lake instead.

[mclaren111]

pob:

Here's how I imagine the tyre rules for Australia:

Excellent =D> =D>

[FrukostScones]

...
The fans say "aw, we wanted to see the new pretty purple one "
....

gold man!

[djos]

Here's how I imagine the tyre rules for Australia:

Literally lol, I'm sitting in the train on the way to work laughing so hard (especially when I got to maldo crashing into the lake on lap one) that I have tears in my eyes and am getting funny looks from other commuters!

[skoop]

Pirelli says "you know... the red one, the yellow one and the white one... you'll have to call em something like option, prime and optimusprime just to confuse the fans as much as possible"

haha, i would love that to happen

[Sevach]

The Medium should be the ugly duckling in Australia unless the temperatures soar.
Given what we saw last year even 2 stints on SS seems possible.

Bahrain and China are a lot more complicated imo, specially China.

[GoranF1]

Does anyone know if teams are allowed to run 2016 cars at Pirelli wet tyre test in Paul Ricard track in January?

[Italiano]

2015 cars afaik. None of the 2016 cars will even be revealed by then.

[godlameroso]

The smooth surface of Australia means graining is a problem. A low working range tire is probably ideal. If I were a team I'd do 5 sets of super softs, 5 sets of softs and 3 sets of mediums. Do your starting stint on super softs, switch to mediums to stay out as long as possible in case of safety car, and finish on super soft, or do a three stopper with two soft stints.

Is it possible to create a tire that is durable and consistent but increases in rolling drag as it wears? Instead of losing grip, it adds rolling drag so that although the car is no slower in the corners it starts losing out in the straights.