Pirelli eager to learn from Miami race for future tyre selection
Pirelli's Motorsport Director Mario Isola stated that Formula One's sole tyre supplier will learn from the experiences they have gained at the Miami Grand Prix, using the data for future tyre selection.
Pirelli brought the three compounds from its midrange to Miami. While the previous two Miami races did not feature high degradation, there is always a danger of tyre issues given the brutally high ambient and track temperautres that drivers can face in Florida.
Last weekend's Miami round was no exception in that regard as ambient temperatures reached the 30 Celsius mark while surface tempetures topped the 48 Celsius mark. Despite these high temperatures, tyres showed good durability with degradation having been fairly low across the entire weekend.
Of the three compounds, the C3 did the most work (562 laps, 50.6%) with a slightly higher mileage than the C2 (504 laps, 45.4%). The longest stint on the C2 was completed by Pierre Gasly, who went on to rack up 45 laps of the 57-lap race on the same set of hards. Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso completed the longest C3-stint with 35 laps. However, the C4 compound was quite robust as well with Kick Sauber's Zhou Guanyu completing a 29-lap stint on the same set of softs.
As a result of the durability, most of the drivers completed the race with a single-stop strategy. In fact, even those who elected to stop twice (Sergio Perez and Kevin Magnussen), pitted for the second time only because the safety car interruption opened up the opportunity of a 'cheap' pit stop.
Speaking of the tyres performance in Miami, Pirelli’s Motorsport Director Mario Isola said: “ "Strangely, despite the surprises thrown up by the Safety Cars, first the virtual and then the real one, it was a very linear race in terms of tyre behaviour: just the one stop and tyres that, whatever the colour of their band, degraded relatively little, partly due to the absence of graining and there was also very little in the way of a performance difference between the cars.
"That said, we saw that the two compounds most used, the C2 and C3, allowed the drivers to push flat out for almost the entire race, as can be seen from studying the chronology of the lap times, which made for a very interesting race, even if on paper it seemed to be constrained by strategy. Obviously, the VSC and SC ruined the plans on several pit walls, while others were luckier or cleverer, but that’s all part of racing."
Given the durability of Pirelli’s tyres in Miami, Isola indicated that his company will carefully analyse the findings from Miami, and the Italian manufacturer might change its approach to future races.
"As always, it will be important to analyse carefully all the data acquired over the three days of this Grand Prix, because they will produce indications that could be useful for us in terms of compound selection and when it comes to understanding the interaction between the tyres and the various types of track surface. In fact, that’s why Formula 1 is a fascinating sport because every day you can learn something that can lead to progress."
