Hoffman900 wrote: ↑23 Mar 2025, 14:04
Furthermore, the cars today are 200kg heavier, add fuel and it’s near 300kg, with about the same peak power as then. All because rules. That’s not the tires’ fault.
The tires absolutely were for Schumacher and the Ferrari. I even remember Max Mosley making a big stink about it.
The cars finish the race on light fuel, you know?
Hamilton had fresh tyres and low fuel(like 2004) for his last stint and what was his pace? 3s slower than the 2004 race record. All that on a fresh tarmac which offers much more grip. The only advantage of the 2004 cars was the 200kg less weight. They had 900HP back them and now 1k, the difference in torque is even bigger. Cars are wider(wider track spreads the load more across both sides yielding more grip from the tyres. That alone was estimated by engineers to slow the 1998 cars by 1.5s cars compared to the 1997 ones). In 2004 they used slim grooved tyres that could be pushed to hell throughout all the stint, no management. Needless to mention the difference in downforce.....
It´s funny that you brought the bike comparison, I won´t talk about it because I don´t follow WSBK at all and only watch MotoGP for fun without focusing on technical details. But I can do some rough estimations for F1, if you will. The difference in weight from 600 to 800kg account for some 8s(some 0.4s per 10kg and it gets lower as the weight increases. From 800 to 810, for instance, it´s around 0.35s on an average track, IIRC). When, in 2009, we went from grooved to slicks (same width), Bridgestone said the gain was around 2.5s. The gap from a grooved slim tyre to a very wide slick one should be closer to 4s, at least. As I said, the 2m car track vs the 1.8m one account for some 1.5s. The aero and Power/Torque difference is quite harder to quantify but so far, accounting only for the other factors, 2004 should be just 2.5s faster. The actual gap is already greater than that
I won´t factor in the new tarmac(which could impact on several seconds(remember the 3s improvement on Sepang on 2016?), because in 2004 they also had a new one, even if today´s might be better. With much more downforce and Power/Torque, these cars should be a bit faster, not almost 3s slower than 2004 as most of the ~8s weight gap is counterbalanced by wider track and much wider slicks.
These are just rough estimates, because as I´m not an insider, I can´t give you precise data but considering that 2 decades later Bridgestone(and everybody else) tyres evolved a lot, being seemingly much slower than a 2004 tyre is humiliating. For reference, from 2014 to 2015, Michelin made a big progress with their compounds bringing tyres ~2.5s faster for about the same durability(WEC). Obviously, this doesn´t happen often and it was a huge one-off step. Just shows tyre are ever evolving.
Finally(if you have survived the long read), if Pirelli is so damn good and so capable, why don´t they go face competition on SuperGT? Even Yokohama and Sumitomo are brave enough to face Bridgestone. Also, Hypercar has open tyres reg, just like LMP1s had. Why do you think no other supplier dares to battle Michelin there? I think even Bridgestone(which is great) have nightmares about the 2005 F1 season. Rebellion once tried Dunlop´s(which belongs to Goodyear) tailored made tyres for their LMP1 but soon went back to the generic tyre Michelin supplied them with(as Michelin focused on the big manufacturers and only made tailored tyres for them).
I would definitely love to see Pirelli displays their immense capability_ without the "tight restrictions that the FIA and F1 imposes to them"_ in a series like SuperGT or WEC so that they could show how great of a tyre they are able to produce with insane grip and infinite durability rubber that would need no management right to the end. I wonder why they don´t do that but rather love to hide on spec series without tyre competition
