2011 Testing - Barcelona 18th - 21st Feb

[speedsense]

Ciro,
Do we know what compound this tire is? I guess it's too hard to tell without markings on the tire.

This tire though, seems the second lap is fastest drops off a litte, degrades on lap 4-15,16,17 then drops off the charts... soo.. if this tire was run, 3-4 pistops would be needed in a 60 lap race... as the usuable length is 15 laps....

This might be a soft, as I heard that the hard tires can go 25 laps.....

thanks for the chart Ciro...

[mith]

It almost looks like if there were two different layers. I mean they're slowing down pretty consistently for the first 13/14 laps in both runs and then start to slow also consistently but at higher rate.

[marcush.]

To me it looks like there s only 10-15 laps in the tyres and then the tyres will just degrade at an increasing rate and might even stabilize at some point after 20laps on a slow level.

many teams just doing 10 lap stints we have not seen how they fare with 15 or 20 laps..

You are losing how much per stop?35seconds? thats an awful lot to recapture if the next set is only going to last 15 laps ...so if you are able not to degrade the tyres too much over a 20 lap stint the quick runners doing only 15 laps or so may look a bit surprised at the end ...

[godlameroso]

I wonder if any team has ran the life out of the tire to test its safety?

[marcush.]

as for heidfelds race sim-he used different compounds and at least one scrubbed set of tyres...
Barcelona testing was not very representative according to Pirelli,as ambient temps were
too low and overnight rain started all days on a green track...
so

[kalinka]

I have no source right now, but I think someone in McLaren said that they can't afford nothing like "glory lap" , because they have very limited number of sets, and if you go too aggressive on the first few laps, then you loose that set for testing purposes, because they never recover. So that means they don't know really when the tyres begin to "disintegrate" because they need desperately all the sets avaliable, for normal testing. Also that proves the data posted here before, that these tyres never reach a stability point like it was the situation with Bridgestones, they just constantly degrade...if I understand correctly.

[Richard]

Ciro - James Allen has followed your lead and posted a blog on this topic. I've extracted the best bits below.

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2011/02/f ... -thinking/

Kaz Kawai from Japanese Fuji TV [sent] me some graphs illustrating the difference in the way the Bridgestone and Pirelli tyres function.

...

Take a look at this graph from last year’s pre season testing at Barcelona, held in similar conditions to what we experienced this week.

You can see the consistency of the lap times, how little they wear, in fact the trend is upwards, showing that as the fuel burns off the laps get faster. The tyres were so good the fuel effect was significantly greater than the tyre wear.



...

Contrast that with the second graph (below) from Sunday’s long runs on Pirelli tyres. The trend is dramatically the other way, despite the car getting lighter as the fuel burns off and this is a graphic illustration of tyre degradation in action.

As for the difference between hard and soft tyres, look at Webber’s graph, the blue one, his second set was new soft tyres and the third set was new hard tyres – there’s quite a significant difference in the rate of drop off, I’m sure you’ll agree. The softs last around 12-14 laps the hards around 20-22 laps.

[marcush.]

how much time is lost with a stop? I´d say around 35seconds as a starting point will be ok .Barcelona race is 66 laps and we are talking about a lap time increase of 0.5 seconds per lap for every stop you add.So the limit of stops you can possibly make and recover the time lost due to increased performance is a calculation of rapidly diminishing returns...Ifeel we will see a lot of nursing of tyres and more important a no risk attitude to not destroy the tyres in no time as you cannot afford to push too much as the tyres will not come back to you?

[raymondu999]

Shouldn't a stop be around 22 seconds? Minus how long it takes the cars to traverse the pit straight?

[nacho]

There will not be much point in using soft tyres except for the mandatory one set.

[audifan]

different strategies richard ?...top teams will hate that ....could be a 'lesser ' team could beat them with a different strategy !

can't wait !

[netoperek]

I'm getting more and more convinced, that this year will be all about drivers smoothness, ability to get tires to the operation window ASAP and car's mechanical grip. Aero downforce wars getting less significant this year's == much more fun for spectators?

[raymondu999]

I doubt aero would be less important. More downforce would help preserve tyres and increase speed.

[FrukostScones]

PowerRanking after Barcelona:
automotorundsport.de
1. Red Bull
2. Ferrari
3. Renault (I think they are as fast as Ferrari)
4. Williams (I think they are as fast as Ferrari(maybe only in qualifying))
5. Toro Rosso
6. McLaren
7. MercedesGP

[madly]

Interesting photo - Barcelona day 2. Look at back below ELF logo.

HiRes corrected: http://sliwinski.priv.pl/f1/r31_barcelo ... xhaust.jpg



HiRes original (private photo): http://zapodaj.net/c6caaa6aa24a.jpg.html