19/07/2019
NEWS STORY
Most long-time followers of F1 will tell you that one its biggest problems in recent years has been the constant tinkering with the rules in a bid to produce the show the powers-that-be desired.
Exciting initiatives outlawed, new rules hurriedly rushed through at just the point there was stability and, in one of the most ludicrous moves, stipulating that Pirelli's tyres should deliberately degrade at a high rate.
While the Italian manufacturer insisted it could produce tyres that could last a whole race distance, the sport's powers-that-be stipulated that this isn't what they wanted, and in a bid to manipulate the racing to produce the show they desired called for tyres that would easily degrade, leading to the tyre management issue that has blighted racing in recent years.
Now, as the sport looks ahead to a massive overhaul in 2021, other than switching to 18 inch wheels, the sport is seeking tyres that will allow drivers to push harder and for longer.
"We want to have tyres that enable people to fight each other without degrading or only giving a short interval for the person attacking to attack," said the FIA's head of single seater technical matter, Nikolas Tombazis at this week's presentation of the blueprint for 2021. "What the current tyres are is a product of what has been asked of them, and I think we need to ask them to do different things to what they have been asked in the past."
"I think in the past we have maybe asked for the wrong things," admitted F1's chief technical officer, Pat Symonds. "It is a very complex problem, but it is something that we don't have a clear idea on yet.
"We are doing a lot of simulation," he continued, "and there are many things you can do, but we do believe that pit stops are important in F1. We know our fans enjoy these two/three seconds pit stops so we do want to have a level of pit stops. Perhaps an easy thing to do would be to have a Le Mans tyre that would go on and on and on but then we would lose the pit stops.
"I have spent a lot of time talking to some of the teams who are going to help us with this task through simulation, but it is a difficult one. I completely agree with Nikolas, we were asking completely the wrong things of Pirelli over the last few years. The high degradation target was not the way to go I think."
"As always our approach is to deliver what F1 wants," Pirelli's Mario Isola told Motorsport.com, "so if we have to modify the targets for 2021 we need to know quite soon because we are going to start the development of those tyres.
"If F1 wants to go to low degradation tyres, or to have bigger delta or any other idea, if it is feasible we are happy to go in this direction," he added.
Other than the timescale, he warned that to make real progress it would need the full cooperation of the teams and drivers.
"We have a research group with the F1 and the FIA, and we have had several meetings with them to understand which is the right direction," he said. "Then we need to involve the teams and drivers to be 100 percent sure we are going in the right direction.
"We need to involve the teams because they have specialists of strategy to understand if it is the right direction, and drivers because they drive the car and they know exactly what they want. It is important we are all on the same page."