[Tech Issue] Pirelli-The Tyre Story..

[Sodemo]

When did we move from a situation of increased downforce actually preserving tyres, to increased downforce causing problems for tyres (overheating / increased wear etc)?

[wnut]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

When did we move from a situation of increased downforce actually preserving tyres, to increased downforce causing problems for tyres (overheating / increased wear etc)?

I think that increased downforce increases the tractions and stops you over heating the tyres by spinning them up , conversely the extra grip and pressure on the side walls causes the tyre to heat up more.

A problem with these "plastic tyres" that never come back after they have been overheated! Artificial problems of their own making.

[Richard C]

Originally Posted by wnut

I think that increased downforce increases the tractions and stops you over heating the tyres by spinning them up , conversely the extra grip and pressure on the side walls causes the tyre to heat up more.

A problem with these "plastic tyres" that never come back after they have been overheated! Artificial problems of their own making.

I was thinking the same thing. There probably is a sweet spot for durability between too little and too much downforce.

Richard

[TzeiTzei]

Tires, tires, tires... I'm tired already. So much talk about tires.

[JeremySmith]

That's what we do in this thread tyre talk.... Maybe there is another thread that is more to you liking ?
Or pick an interesting topic and be a thread starter 👍

[Mike Harte]

For those that sometimes criticise Pirelli about their F1 tyres, this article from Motorsport dot com makes very interesting reading. And as is said in the piece, a picture tells a thousand words.

See: http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/an...ng-841343/?s=1

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

For those that sometimes criticise Pirelli about their F1 tyres, this article from Motorsport dot com makes very interesting reading. And as is said in the piece, a picture tells a thousand words.

See: http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/an...ng-841343/?s=1

That link's been been doing the rounds on 10-Tenths. Impressive photo.

[wnut]

This picture of standing waves in tyres fascinated me.

Seb's tyre at Spa.




Perhaps Pirelli just need to plain beef up the side walls of their tyres.

It is not as if they have any competition in F1.

[wnut]

Wonder when Pirelli were instructed to produce rubbish rain tyres to spice up the action.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2016/11/1...ons-raikkonen/

[Akrapovic]

Pirelli keep coming under fire in other series (Blancpain, for example) for the tyres being unpredictable and difficult for the Am drivers.

The excuse of "they were told to make a crap product" stopped being good enough years ago now.

[bjohnsonsmith]

Maybe it's time to use another tyre manufacturer.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by wnut

Wonder when Pirelli were instructed to produce rubbish rain tyres to spice up the action.

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2016/11/1...ons-raikkonen/

but we dont really know what setup his Ferrari had. his quali time might be an indication that they leaned more towards a dry set up.

plus he crashed out so no doubt it was the tires and aquaplaning which was the cause not the driver.

are the Pirelli wets as good as prior tire manu's offerings?...probably not though.

looking back a 2009 Brazil where quali was wet to start Q1 (and to the best of my memory they used wet tires for that session) the lap times were lower then Max's fastest lap in 2016. here.

but so many factors are different im not sure thats even a worthy comparison or worth anyones time to look back at that session in more detail to see who ran what in what time.

but from this race alone...i think its fair to ask how bad could the tires have been if many opted to put 43odd laps on them and Max, all be it with a fresh set, was able to find grip even on the wettest parts of the track...the tires seemed to work well enough for him.

[S griffin]

I think it's about time we had tyres built to their best and they should open it up to more than one manufacturer. Because wet racing has become a lost art and Senna is probably turning in his grave

[ASCII Man]

Senna has spun around in his grave so much by now that he's become a dynamo powerful enough to power a small city.

[wnut]

Nico not impressed with Pirelli wet weather tyres either.

http://www.f1reader.com/#/news/rosbe...in-2017-160092

[Mike Harte]

I really think that some people have either very poor memories or that they just have selective ones.

For as long as I can remember, F1 cars have been falling off the track in wet weather. In fact, at one wet Brazil race some years ago, about a third of the field went off around the Senna esses, as well as other places. I seem to recall that that race was prior to Pirelli.

And there are plenty of other examples; just needs somebody else to search them out!

[wnut]

Originally Posted by F1Pete

I like racing too, but I enjoy seeing what driver can save their tires vs who can't. They all get the same tires. I remember when Ferrari/MS had exclusive Bridgestone support where no one else had that. That was unfair.

Yet statistically not nearly as unfair as having a works Mercedes is.

[wolfhound]

I am beginning to wonder if Pirelli are really up to the job of producing F1 tyres.

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/pi...-tyres-863158/

The F1 teams have lots of ways of simulating real world track conditions where they can arrive at a new circuit and be very quickly up to the pace without any testing.

Meanwhile Pirelli do not seem to know if their tyres will be up to the job for next season. They have had the teams run test mules that are designed to simulate what conditions should be like next season. The teams are currently designing and building new cars that will have a few days testing before the season begins. This testing will be to verify their simulations and check that their systems will perform reliably. There will be some work done in the latter stages to upgrade performance. I suspect the pace of development over the season will be pretty rapid as the teams workout who has come up with the best cars and further develop the new ideas.

If you look at Pirelli's record over the last few years they have requested a number of regulation changes to ensure that their tyres run without failure. Their wet weather performance as witnessed in last year's Brazilian GP is pretty poor.

I wonder do they have proper simulation tools to help them with tyre design? Looking at the evidence it appears not. If they were in a tyre war with another manufacturer how long would they last?

[Mike Harte]

wolfhound, you need to read the article again, I think. Pirelli don't think that the test mules that the 3 teams ran were producing as much downforce as Pirelli believes that this year's cars are going to. In fact, it was reported months ago that the Ferrari hack was way behind the other two in terms of downforce.

And Pirelli are concerned that when the cars run on hotter tracks with also higher ambient temperatures, that the tyres may start overheating, especially when one car is closely following another. This is why Pirelli and some of the teams wanted to conduct this February's new car testing in the UAE instead of Spain.

Furthermore, unlike the days when Bridgestone developed tyres specifically for Ferrari and hang everybody else who might want to use their rubber, Pirelli have to do their best to supply tyres that suit the characteristics of every different car, which must mean that compromises have to be made. And now that the teams have started to provide Pirelli with data from their latest simulations with the new designs, they are finding that the data is very much different to that which they collected from last year's test mules.

That's not Pirelli's fault; blame the FIA for introducing new rules and expecting Pirelli to work with one hand behind it's back. Unlike in previous eras, I view this year's championship as a 20 weekend testing regime.

You have the new aerodynamics, new tyres and new PUs/PU architecture, and the FIA expect the teams, along with Pirelli, to sort everything out in 6 days, when the track will be cold and there is a strong possibility of moisture or even frost.

[Akrapovic]

Goodyear and Bridgestone managed to produce tyres for every car.

I've never really bought the excuse of "well they have to work with everything". This is how it was for a long time in the past, and still is in a lot of series. Michelin do it just fine in sports cars. Funnily enough, the tyres that get complaints the most in sports cars in Europe, and Pirelli in Blancpain, because they're difficult to predict.

[wolfhound]

The article left me with the impression that Pirelli are unsure what way their tyres will behave later in the season. If they feel that the tyres might overheat then they should design them to prevent that from happening on their harder tyres.
Its not like the cars are more significantly more powerful next season its just that downforce will be higher and the tyres will be wider. This will mean that the sidewall loads will be higher but I would suspect that the loads over the thread width will be broadly similar to what is currently the case.

In the Ferrari Bridgestone era the tyres were designed to suit Ferrari.

However now Pirelli should be able to produce tyres and the teams should be able to design their cars around them.

As the cars develop their performance characteristics will change, Its something that Pirelli will have to live with, its not like a spec series where you could use the same tyres for a number of years.

[Greem]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

However now Pirelli should be able to produce tyres and the teams should be able to design their cars around them.

Amen to that.

The tyre spec should be fixed by now (or even earlier), samples given to teams, testing permitted so they can get a handle on the spec, the cars adjusted accordingly.

But... cost caps, limits & reductions in testing; all mean we end up moaning endlessly about how crap Pirelli are.

If the entire system wasn't contractually specified in a way which basically means nobody knows what their car will do to or on the tyres until the first official test, and that leaves about 10 weeks (or less!) for Pirelli to produce a knee-jerk response to the couple of teams that can't make it work (and can't test), where exactly does the problem lie?

Not with Pirelli. Or the teams. Or the FIA, according to some regulars.

So where?

[Mike Harte]

I think that you are expecting miracles from Pirelli. F1 is a moving dynamic and teams are changing their cars on an almost daily basis. And just when the teams think that they have their "perfect" car for the next race, along comes another team who gives a little love bite to the FIA, and overnight the rules have been "clarified" and they have to re-design their suspension geometry.

This, undoubtedly has a knock on effect on Pirelli who designed the new tyres partly based on data from at least two teams that are now going to have to modify their suspension, which will no doubt affect the way that their cars will use the rubber.

And I think that you will find that it's Pirelli that is always having to design tyres that the FIA, the teams and the drivers want, not the teams making their cars to suit the tyres.

[Greem]

Mike, I think I'll put it a different way:

Once upon a time (and it's this way in club racing, at various levels including some national championships), teams/cars/drivers had to make their race performance fit and be adjusted to the performance of the supplied tyres.

In F1, the tyre supplier is expected to make a product which fits a plethora of different circuits/weather conditions/car configurations with no excessive falloff in performance beyond that which the sanctioning authority have specified.

Time and time again, we see conditions outside the specification, track surfaces which have changed, and cars which are immensely different in performance to the original spec.

Isn't this simply F1 putting the metaphorical cart (or at the very least, its tyres) before the horse?

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Greem

Mike, I think I'll put it a different way:

Sorry Graham, I wasn't responding to you but to "wolfhound"; you just jumped in before I had hit the submit button. I agree with you, and I have a lot of sympathy for Pirelli for the, IMHO, unwarranted criticism that they get.

And, as was highlighted in the last couple of years, the teams and some drivers are their own worst enemies. They keep on trying to circumvent the working parameters that Pirelli set, and then joe public, the teams and the drivers especially blame the tyre supplier.

As long as the FIA and FOM insist on only having one tyre supplier, then it will be the tyre supplier that has to keep all the teams as happy as they can, taking into account all their different requirements. It cannot be the way that it was with Ferrari and Bridgestone, and we have to accept and appreciate Pirelli's predicament.