There clearly seems to be a pattern in the tactics in nigh on all dry races so far.

Qualify on softs
Change to hards on lap 15 or so (depending on track)
Drive to finish.

Now, this isn't really what was expected at the start of the year was it? I thought there should have been a lot more variation in tactics, with the need to change tryes later or risk a real drop off in performance. As it is it seems the hard tyres are more than capable of keeping a drivable speed for the 45 or so laps they do. So all races are come down to a one stop window.

The only one which tried to change and risk something different was to my mind was Hamilton in Australia (I think) where Hamilton changed a second time, but simply couldn't make it work to pass and lost a place or two as a result.

So, is this going to be the pattern for the vast majority of other dry races? Is is making the racing 1-dimensional now everyone is doing the same? Is it reducing excitment and ovetaking?

Or should Bridgestone change the tryre compound of hard tyres to be less durable?

My answer, yes to all the above.

I say ban compulsory pitstops. I wonder if Pirelli or Michelin would be OK with that.

I reckon their tyres would be grippier but lack the life of bridgestones

Well they will make tyres according to what FIA wants. But just like Bridgestone, mostly on the safe side.

Problem is, I think, that the tyre company is in this for the marketing. Tyres falling apart is NOT a good image you want imprinted on the viewers. Sure, most of us know that this doesn't reflect on their road tyres but it is still the wrong imagery. Think Indy! And since there is no competition, there's no penalty for making their tyres last longer, and we will get people able to go an entire race on one set of tyres. Marry that with the aero regulations not really favoring overtaking, and we have a formula that heavily discourages a second stop. Hamilton proved that race speed is nothing without track position, and that was a lesson well learned by all. I thought we MIGHT see someone stopping twice in Turkey, and we had a few backmarkes try it, but the benefit in speed wasn't generally worth the extra stop.

So, the only solution to tyres lasting an entire race is a tyre war, I think. That or pressure from FIA, but if they want tyre makers to deliberately make crappy tyres they also might find themselves out of suppliers...

Oz was a mistake, team called the tyre change, but should have left him out.

Yes the tyres are far to durable.

Just spent the last half hour or reading through the postings near the start of the year.
(Some optimistic people predicting the 'best season ever', Ferrari to do very well, and only 12% of people predicted Red Bull to be fastest.)

As far as tyre strategy goes, most people seemed to think 2 stops would be the standard method.

Yeah, but they were following the kind of risk/choice which was presented at the beginning of the season. Take a tyre change and suddenly have oodles more speed as others are on worn bad tryes.

Clearly it was a wrong decision, and one no-one else has 'gambled' on since, so leads to a slow-down processional race towards the end.

You could ban the compulsory stop, but ask that Michelin supply a soft that is at least 3-4 seconds per lap faster than the hard nominal all-race tyre... that should be faster enough to overtake and surely would be durable? The worn soft tyre would only need to slow to 2-3 seconds per lap slower than a very worn hard tyre.

I don't know why anyone thought it would be any different, me personally had always thought the teams would run identical tyre strategies.

The life of the tyres is far to long however.

That's why we thought things would be a bit different. No one really expected the tyres to be capable of lasting as near as damn it the whole race with little drop off, we hoped that the tyres would be marginal, with some being able to make them last better than others. Then I believe we would have seen gambles.

Maybe if the first scheduled stops weren't allowed until lap 25 we would see more variation and tyre management, on the downside this is yet another artificial device to spice up the show so I'm not too sure.

There simply shouldn't be a mandatory stop, with that and having to start with the tyres you qualified with it is inevitable that everyone will do the same thing.

Or maybe the teams underestimated the durability of the tyres?

Sort of expecting Hamilton China '07 to occur every once in a while? Taking the gamble to stay out til the end....

Doesnt matter if they did, they are not the ones who specify or make the tyres.

Extreme circumstances like Alonso at Monaco and you might see it, but under normal conditions they are all going to do as near as damn it the same thing, and the performance of the tyre is such that there is no point in gambling on a late change in the hope of being a bit faster.

Yes it does, car and tyre combinations can yield very different results.

So do you think the teams should be making a car that wears the tyres out quicker?

May I ask, how was it in 1993 and before?

I was too young back then, but from videos of old races I've seen that most people used to pit at least once and even twice, although it was not that unusual to see someone trying to go the distance without pitting. There had to be some reason for pitting, because currently I think nobody would pit in the whole race if there was no mandatory pitstop rule.

No, neither will they make a car that can't get the tyres to work either.

Bridgestone give the teams data on their tyres, but it all comes down to proper testing.

The tyres couldn't last the whole race without dramatic drop off, but the drivers could make a difference by taking it easy early in the race and come on strong later. With the current tyres they can go hammer and tongs virtually the whole race without any real problems.

Or Lightening McQueen's gamble at the Piston Cup.

(sorry, I have 3 year old)

there's no variation in tactics because of no refuling, as there is no variation in car weight and that "damages" overtaking

Now we've blessed this season with:
- half the races affected by rain
- 2 cars having 10-15 km/h higher top speed than the others. Usually those 2 cars qualified worse than expected so we had some nice overtakings

Except of the above 2 facts the overtaking situation would have been way worse that last year

Not sure why people don't get it...
The lack of passing is because of the cars and not because of tyres/refueling/tracks.
Nothing is going to be changed until the cars are "sorted out". Sure, from time to time we're going to have some odd races (usually with rain) that might lead into a false sense of security that the rules worked, but it ain't so

the life of the tyres is far too long???
i'd say that is the last of the problems.
the life of engines is too long.
the life of gearboxes is too long.
the life career of drivers in F1 is far too long...

What? No.

No one pitted who won. What would happen is that drivers would either take a gamble and wear the tires to get position early in the race, or save the tires for later in the race. It put far more effort on the driver.
But at that time, there were tire wars, which meant that some years were a bust for teams just because they were stuck on the wrong tires.

One tire, no pitstops. Pitstops were just a cheap attempt to improve racing by allowing passing in the pits and strategies, but I prefer the no-stop days.

There are few overtakes because of the cars and not because the drivers are "lazy" or not "skilled" enough
No pitstops means less passing and in case the cars are having similar top speeds, you're going to need a car 2 sec per lap faster to pass

Right. That's my point, the stupid formula is designed so that the only way we see passing is in the pits.
In the pre-megadownforce/huge front wings/diffusers days, you actually saw passing on the track (really!).

I don't think it can be ignored that they also had qualifying engines, qualifying tyres etc. etc. There was far more chance that someones race pace would not match their quali pace.

I dare to say that if we didn't have the rule that forces all the top 10 guys to start on softs, BUT retained the rule that you need to use both compounds, things would get way more interesting. Start on hards, get a huge performance advantage when changing to softs, so now you can overtake or jump the folks that pit later. That's awesome, but here's the problem. The softs you just put very early to jump the other cars on the pits, won't last the 50 laps stint, because they're softs. Good luck.

Another thing I don't understand: why can't the teams themselves pick which compounds they want to bring to a race? If it's a question of logistics, of how many tyres need to be fabricated, just force them to pick several months in advance.

For example: if Red Bull wants to race with the super softs and mediums, while McLarens prefers to gamble with the softs and hards... why would that possibly be a bad thing? Brings more variables to the mix.

The main factor in tyre wear are the characteristics of the car.

I think the would want to pick the tyres over the weekend itself based on the actual conditions. Picking months in advance could easily see them having the wrong tyres. I'm sure the teams would prefer everyone was in the same boat in that situation.

I totally disagre. The main factor is the compound itself.

Opposed to the driver I mean.

What happened from 1985-1993 varied a bit depending on who was supplying the tyres.

E.g. in 1986 there was a 'tyre war' and both Goodyear and Pirelli would take a few compounds to each track. In some races the Pirellis were superior (e.g. Mexico). Sometimes Goodyear runners would pit and sometimes they wouldn't.

For most of the 80's Goodyear was a single supplier and would usually only bring one compound to the race. Sometimes the tyres would last better at other venues than others. Examples

Brazil 1987. Prost wins on a 2-stop strategy. Most of his competitiors had to pit three times, Piquet had to pit four times.
Silvestone 1987. Piquet tries to win going non-stop but is famously caught by Mansell a few laps from the end (who pitted once).

Just ban the harder compound?

As I can remember it (and its a long time ago now) for most of the time that Goodyear was the single tyre supplier the teams either made no stops...or everyone made one stop.

Track temps have offered a lot of variables over the last 2 seasons, not mentioned alot however I think some of RedBulls lack of pace was down to higher track temps which they suffered last in a generally cooler racing year, Ferrari probably had the same issues and McLaren seem as they did then to excel when the temps are up, a fucntion of suspension setups, but it does offer some variance in the race at least.

Doesn't seem to make a lot of difference during qualification however.

win

1993, I looked those shortly before the season and from the memory it was like this.

South Africa: Mostly 1 stop
Brazil: Rain in mid-race so 2 stops (to the wets and back to slicks)
Europe: Variable weather so massive difference in the amount of stops
San Marino: Started on damp, dry enough around laps 8-10 and then to finish from that point.
Spain: Winner Prost no stops, most others one.
Monaco: Of the top 6, it was 3-3 whether to make stops or not.
Canada: 1 stop almost all-around
France: mostly 1 stop, Schumacher 3rd and Brundle 5th with two.
Britain: 1 stop
Germany: Anything from no stops to two.
Hungary: 2 stops
Belgium: 2 stops
Italy: 1 stop
Portugal: 1 stop apart from Alesi (4th) with two.
Japan: Rain in mid-race so 2 stops at least (Senna 1st and Häkkinen 3rd had made one before the rain so they had three)
Australia: 2 stops

Talking about Turkish GP, Alguersuari pitted for a second time (he had enough space to Liuzzi so he did not lose any position by doing so)
and actually was closer to the Saubers than he was before the stop. He got stuck behind Hülkenberg on the last lap and that affected him, not sure if he would have been able to try to pass PdlR without that.