Sometimes the teams are basically forced to stay in the garages in a session in order to have enough fresh sets of tires for the subsequent session.

It sounds like a relatively easy problem to fix, how about doing that now?

Yes, qualy is a joke nowadays.

E: Qualy tire would help with that to I think

Yes, definitely.
Would someone remind me the current allocation of wet weather tires?

The fact they even have allocations of wet weather tires is NUTS! It's a safety issue. Having the team tell Button on the radio that if he's "learned enough you need to conserve" them, is simply crazy. Wet weather tires should be unlimited, if the whole weekend is wet, drivers can go out as much as they'd like to get acclimated to the very tricky conditions.

tyres

Sod all these cost cutting measures, pay the drivers less!

helloo sunshine.

bump for mr. Timo Glock, and the lulz...

It's not like they're forced to save tyres or have fresh tyres for the next session. Tyres are the same as front wings you only have so much, nothing in life is unlimited.

Without any limit, teams would take new tires everytime they go out. So, in practice sessions it's IMO OK to have limited number of tires. But in quali and race, IMO there should be no limits for the number of tires.

I'm not against tyre limits as such (helps planning tyre consumption and reduces costs), but especially this season 2 more sets per weekend would certainly help. It seems like an easy fix to get more FP and qualy action and will hopefully be implemented in 2012.

What do you mean by 'forced'? it's OBVIOUSLY not a life or death decision, but in the interest of competition they are indeed 'forced' to save them to have enough fresh ones.

It wasn't so much of an issue with the Bridgestones, but with these tires, when they're off they are really unusable... like 3 seconds off the pace and more, so pretty much useless.

Also, who's asking about an unlimited supply? IMO they should simply have enough so the car isn't parked for strategic reasons.

That's the entire point.

No they're not, it's the same thing either way. The only reason they save it for FP2 is that the track is more rubbered in, drivers more comfortable and they get abit better data. They don't have to do anything. Yes, obviously it's not a life or death situation, so don't complain then.

I'm tired of seeing people talk about people being forced to do things in F1. I know there's a 20 inch thick rulebook for this sport but most of what goes on is because the teams choose to do so.

So you maintain they aren't forced to save sets of tires?

lol, seriously?

I'll leave you to your fantasies.

edit: you do sound tired.

It's not only a problem in such situations like Glock's, but mostly in qualifying/race. 11 sets is not enough with Pirelli's degradation rate and it's quite ridiculous that Formula 1 has such problems.

The limit must be reasonable. Enough for them to race properly and use all the running time they have (most importantly in qualifying), but not too big.

The simplest solution would be tu return to the 14 tire sets per GP allocation (opposed to 11 sets since 2010). And more option tires, given that they are much more popular now. Pirelli proposed to change the allocation from 6 sets of primes and 5 of options to 6 options 5 primes. But apparently some teams didn't agree for it.

King Six is right. The whole purpose of the current ruleset was to "motivate" teams and drivers to drive in every practice session, wasn't it? Because when they have to return 1 set of tires after the session they can as well just use that set up in the session. If you change it back to old rules you'll be back to nobody driving in FP1. Same if you give them heaps of additional sets. Then they could afford to give back unused/barely used ones and still have enough fresh sets for FP2 and onwards to do the needed testing.

Yes, and they should get rid of that stupid rule about starting the race on used tires.

Don't see the need for extra tires.
In FPs they should just learn to manage with the current allocation and the limitation on tires for qualy and race makes sometimes for interesting strategies.

Having 1 or 2 cars opting to not run in Q3 is hardly a negative for me, so voted NO.

Teams not allowing the drivers to fight for the pole to the end to save tires for the race is also hardly a negative? Drivers not making as many stints to improve their time as possible is also good?

We have only one good strategy: to save tires. Not running in qualifying isn't really a strategy. Nor is it by any means exciting.

Hippo: Well, if they had enough tires the problem wouldn't exist. Lack of testing alone would convince them to run in those sessions (though still we would see more running in FP2). But that's not the point I think. The fact that they take the tires away isn't bad. The bad thing is that there are not enough sets for qualifying and the race.

Pirelli's proposal seems reasonable. If the teams often don't use the 6th set of primes and at the same time are short of options, changing the allocation from 6/5 to 5/6 could solve the problem. Though still I think that they should return to the 14 sets per weekend allocation (with the practice tires rule which isn't bad).

The qualifying tire rule may also be a problem. I'm not sure TBH. But the fact is that it seems not to change anything for the better anyway.