185 replies to this topic

[JeePee]

Let's put tarmac runoff all over the place.

 

Let's put the tyrewalls 2km further away from the track.

 

Let's make the cars 150 kg havier in the name of safety.

 

Let's pull out the safety car when there's a dark cloud above the circuit.

 

Let's put them on exploding tyres!

[bonjon1979a]

I may be a lone voice here but Pirelli haven't always been bad, the first year they supplied the tyres was actually alright. The tyres gave decent performance and then just dropped off a sudden and dramatic cliff which forced teams to stop. There was not the same failures and because the 'cliff' was so dramatic the teams couldn't run conservative one stop strategies as the time loss was so dramatic. It seems like they've been trying to reinvent the wheel, literally as well as metaphorically and the changes have left them in the brown stuff.

[Kristian]

Yeah I liked the Pirelli's in the first season, but as the teams sussed it out, they had to keep trying to make them more challenging. 

 

I bet the tyres this year will be indestructible, and everyone will be moaning by the 5th race at how boring it is. 

[Tenmantaylor]

Looking back at the entirety of the Bridgestone and Michelin eras I don't remember any delams or high speed failures of the structure of the tyre in the way has happened 10s of times with Pirelli just in the last 2 seasons. The only thing that came close was Indy 05 with Michelin but we know that was the track as it didn't recur. Lewis ran on the canvas for a couple of laps at China 07 on the Bridgestones without a catastrophic failure, Kimi ran with a major flatspot for laps on the Michelins at Nurb 05 with massive vibration which eventually destroyed the suspension. The tyre was fine structurely. I'm convinced the design and construction of the Pirellis is fundamentally flawed. They don't know what they are doing.

Edited by Tenmantaylor, 20 December 2013 - 13:39.

[OneAndOnly]

Wow tyre blowup happened for the first time in F1 ever. I am shocked. Ask Mika Hakkinen about his Hockenheim adventure with Bridgestone.

 

These things happened in F1 since I can remember. Tyre blowing up every once in a while isn't something we should start whining about. 2013. Silverston mockery is something that shouldn't happen. How do you know Mercedes isn't one to blame for this incident? Maybe they were pushing tires over limits to see how far they can go? There are so many things we don't know. Other teams ran in Bahrein and 1 tyre blowup in 3 days with so many cars isn't something that should raise concern.

[Module]

Looking back at the entirety of the Bridgestone and Michelin eras I don't remember any delams or high speed failures of the structure of the tyre in the way has happened 10s of times with Pirelli just in the last 2 seasons. The only thing that came close was Indy 05 with Michelin but we know that was the track as it didn't recur. Lewis ran on the canvas for a couple of laps at China 07 on the Bridgestones without a catastrophic failure, Kimi ran with a major flatspot for laps on the Michelins at Nurb 05 with massive vibration which eventually destroyed the suspension. The tyre was fine structurely. I'm convinced the design and construction of the Pirellis is fundamentally flawed. They don't know what they are doing.

Exactly. It's not about them having soft compounds but the structure if the tyre not coping. 2005 was to avoid a silverstone 2013. It is not very unlike Pirelli this year trying to limit amount if laps for a tyre, the tyre war just made 2005 different. Pirelli is restricting usage of tyres unlike before so even with the renewed tyres there are concerns about their integrity

[SpaMaster]

Pirelli says the tyre that blowed out in Rosberg's car was of new structure and compound that they wanted to test. If they want to test such tyres, why use real human beings as guinea pigs? They should do/try to do some model testing that does not involve human being first. It is just not acceptable that they want to test new stuff on real human drivers. Don't tell me that they don't have any other option. If they don't have any other option, then they should not be testing it and should not venture into such unrealistic projects.

[Petroltorque]

Firstly, Pirelli are not restricting the use of their tyres. They are suggesting that teams operate them WITHIN the prescribed limits. What they found after Silverstone was certain teams were running tyre pressures and cambers well outside the safety margins. In addition the trick of 'switching' tyres, running them counter to directional alignment was resulting in an uncontrolled standing wave in the tyre wall and failure. If the safety margin for a component is 4% and teams run beyond that then expect failures. Secondly the reason testing occurs on track is to validate laboratory findings thus confirming results are replicated. It is standard practice in manufacturing. Even pharmacological companies test their products by live human trials before global marketing.

[ExFlagMan]

I'm getting a feeling that many posters on this thread would much rather have no F1 next year than have Pirelli supply the tyres.

[ch103]

I'll never buy Pirelli tires for my road car.

[l8apex]

I was recently at an event where I was standing right next to the guy in charge of Pirelli in the America's... I had to try my hardest not to punch the guy on the face.

 

Pirelli isn't helping their reputation by showing their complete incompetence as the current F1 tire supplier.

 

If things go bad next year it will most definitely be Michelin in 2015.

[pikamoku]

I'll never buy Pirelli tires for my road car.

 

 do you drive a F1 car on road? FYI, road cars are merely F1 cars related. F1 tyres and road car tyres too.

 

ps: I had never used pirelli tyres 

I was recently at an event where I was standing right next to the guy in charge of Pirelli in the America's... I had to try my hardest not to punch the guy on the face.

 

Pirelli isn't helping their reputation by showing their complete incompetence as the current F1 tire supplier.

 

If things go bad next year it will most definitely be Michelin in 2015

I dont know exactly what the problem is (what they were testing and failed) but Pirelli will face dificult times (PR related) if explosions, delaminations, etc are back in '14. Any credit they had has gone on '13. They need to be reliable, period.

[Peter Perfect]

I'm getting a feeling that many posters on this thread would much rather have no F1 next year than have Pirelli supply the tyres.

 Maybe I'm missing something, but I didn't think there was a queue of tyre suppliers begging to get into F1.

[DanardiF1]

Let's put tarmac runoff all over the place.

 

Let's put the tyrewalls 2km further away from the track.

 

Let's make the cars 150 kg havier in the name of safety.

 

Let's pull out the safety car when there's a dark cloud above the circuit.

 

Let's put them on exploding tyres!

 

I get the point of your post, but if that 150kg extra is used on stronger carbon fibre and better crash structures, why are you complaining?

 

Let's say the current V8 engine weighs with all ancillaries 100kg. The current car weight limit is 642kg, so the car itself, meaning all safety cells, crash structures and the like weigh 542kg.

 

Now if we kept the weight limit the same for next year, but introduced the new powertrains that weigh considerably more, let's say 160kg in this example. That means that now the car itself has to weigh 482kg to get down to the minimum weight, which everyone would do because it's silly to run overweight in F1. So where does that 60kg saving come from? Well let's make this piece of the car lighter by using less carbon... sure some savings will come from improvements to certain parts, but mostly it will come from scrimping on the structure of the car. Raising the weight limit means that the teams have more to play with, enabling them to incorporate the heavier engines but still retain or even improve the strength of the car.

[VoltagE]

Looking back at the entirety of the Bridgestone and Michelin eras I don't remember any delams or high speed failures of the structure of the tyre in the way has happened 10s of times with Pirelli just in the last 2 seasons. The only thing that came close was Indy 05 with Michelin but we know that was the track as it didn't recur. Lewis ran on the canvas for a couple of laps at China 07 on the Bridgestones without a catastrophic failure, Kimi ran with a major flatspot for laps on the Michelins at Nurb 05 with massive vibration which eventually destroyed the suspension. The tyre was fine structurely. I'm convinced the design and construction of the Pirellis is fundamentally flawed. They don't know what they are doing.

Problem here is that in those times the manufacturers tried to make tyres to last as long as possible.

So they had much thicker usage surface (The actual compound over the structure) and as such stressed the gluing less than with Pirelli where they had to make the usage layer thin to make the cliff effect.

This was even bigger problem because the steel belt (Used in the begining of the 2013) spread the excess heat evenly causing full delamination instead of local delamination (Example of local delamination is what Hamilton's inters had in Chines GP 2007).

 

Besides tyre delamination is much safer than tyre blowouts where the whole structure of the tyre fails. The media and most fans simply think the otherway, because delamination looks more "dramatic".

[JeePee]

I get the point of your post, but if that 150kg extra is used on stronger carbon fibre and better crash structures, why are you complaining?

 

Let's say the current V8 engine weighs with all ancillaries 100kg. The current car weight limit is 642kg, so the car itself, meaning all safety cells, crash structures and the like weigh 542kg.

 

Now if we kept the weight limit the same for next year, but introduced the new powertrains that weigh considerably more, let's say 160kg in this example. That means that now the car itself has to weigh 482kg to get down to the minimum weight, which everyone would do because it's silly to run overweight in F1. So where does that 60kg saving come from? Well let's make this piece of the car lighter by using less carbon... sure some savings will come from improvements to certain parts, but mostly it will come from scrimping on the structure of the car. Raising the weight limit means that the teams have more to play with, enabling them to incorporate the heavier engines but still retain or even improve the strength of the car.

 

It's offtopic, but the the 2013 cars are not on the limit. A 2009 car which is basically the same as a 2013 car (same V8, KERS already added) weighs 605 kg. The same weight was reached with the heavy 3.0l V10. We now have ini mini tiny engine blocks and the cars weight as much as a 4 seater Peugeot from a time the French didn't even knew what carbon fiber was. It results in cars looking dead slow around a corner and not as snappy, direct and exciting as they used to be.

With a lower weight limit teams can't go full ****** in scraping CF off the monocoque, because there's always that crashtest it has to get through.

[dhill39]

I am no tire expert,but they are doing something.They have been in superbike for how many years and still having tire problems.A poster said they wouldn't buy a road Pirelli tire,I second that one,their p-zero tires always gets bubbles,I have been through many,terrible tire company.

[study]

Call me confused or cynical, but I'm very wary in light of 2013 of posters who defend Pirelli tyre, I don't understand why they are prepared to give them a 2nd, 3rd 4th, 5th, etc chance to redeme themselve, they have shown time and time again to be useless.

[Petroltorque]

Call me confused or cynical, but I'm very wary in light of 2013 of posters who defend Pirelli tyre, I don't understand why they are prepared to give them a 2nd, 3rd 4th, 5th, etc chance to redeme themselve, they have shown time and time again to be useless.

Let me just say that I have no affiliation with Pirelli SpA. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as I know the complexities of developing a product under restricting conditions. In addition I don't see a que of manufacturers willing to tender for the contract with all the associated adverse publicity, If things go well a supplier gets no credit. If things go badly they take all the blame. 

[mp4x]

I’m sure all the fans are tired of Pirelli and Hembery’s lame excuses. Like most of the team bosses or CEOs who aren’t succeeding or achieving anything important, instead of shutting up and searching for better ways to perform better all they do is looking for excuses. One race we should blame the teams because they ran a very extreme camber that Pirelli did not approve of. Who they’re kidding? Maybe they can fool some of the fans or one particular senile wizened man (half-man) in power but they cannot do so when they’re facing the teams. It’s the first time that the teams running extreme cambers or it’s the first time that drivers ride the curbs? They proclaimed on numerous occasions that all of tire delamination is product of what teams and F1 management asked of them. They asked them to make close racing not to shrink the racing line by producing 50 tonnes of marble (don’t know the exact number). I’m sure most of you can remember in some of races (like Singapore 2013) marbles preventing any useful maneuver. Why should a driver risk his race and run over the marbles and ruin his tires? In years before Pirelli all we had was bulletproof or stone-hard tires? We had 2010 Montréal Grand Perix, in 2009 Hungarian Grand Perix we had multiple on-track overtaking moves ; without DRS or Magical Pirelli Tires ™ (you can call them P-Zero)  that make overtaking so easy that after the race we can count at least 764 successful overtaking moves which is very entertaining. Only F1 management and some team bosses and drivers are to blame; instead of criticizing or reprimanding (in F1 management’s case) them they keep exalting Pirelli. They must be replaced sooner than later.

Edited by mp4x, 22 December 2013 - 16:56.

[SenorSjon]

And Pirelli has a go at it again: http://www.autosport...t.php/id/111942

 

The excuse is everytime the same:

Although Pirelli often faced criticism for the severe degradation of its tyres, Hembery insists the sport should remember that it supplied the product that was asked by Formula 1 teams and bosses.

[ch103]

 do you drive a F1 car on road? FYI, road cars are merely F1 cars related. F1 tyres and road car tyres too.

 

ps: I had never used pirelli tyres 

 

 

What?

[Ross Stonefeld]

And Pirelli has a go at it again: http://www.autosport...t.php/id/111942

 

The excuse is everytime the same:

 

Because it's still true?

[l8apex]

It wasn't just Red Bull that was unhappy with them... there were quite a few very vocal and unhappy drivers from other teams.

 

Pirelli should stop whining, shut up and try to build a good tire for 2014. 

[ExFlagMan]

They asked them to make close racing not to shrink the racing line by producing 50 tonnes of marble (don’t know the exact number). I’m sure most of you can remember in some of races (like Singapore 2013) marbles preventing any useful maneuver.

Obviously not been watching F1 for very long then!
Tonnes of marbles a Pirelli era only phenomena? I don't think so! Back in the 'good old days' of the tyre-wars era I can remember being asked to help sweep the track on the entrance to Stowe corner at Silverstone during the Sunday lunch break as the track sweepers could not cope with the marbles, and this was after a single 30 min warm-up session - the track having been thoroughly swept overnight.

You think Pirelli could not make rock-hard tyres if they where asked to? In the tyre war era the biggest complaint against them was their tyres where too hard to be competitive.

[Bloggsworth]

They should make the tyre so hard that they last 5 races then require the drivers to come into the pits at 1/3 and 2/3 distance in order to change their trousers - This should significantly improve the design of zips and other trouser related paraphernalia, imagine what Newey could do with an F duct...

[Nonesuch]

And Pirelli has a go at it again: http://www.autosport...t.php/id/111942

 

"We are a partner and competitor," said Paul Hembery.

 

Competitor? Definition: a person, team, company, etc., that competes; rival.

Competing? Definition: to strive to outdo another for acknowledgment, a prize, supremacy, profit, etc.; engage in a contest; vie: to compete in a race; to compete in business.

 

Pirelli is as much a competitor as Transport for London is a competitor on the London Underground. 

 

Pirelli is not a competitor, it is a supplier. And it's drawing far too much attention to itself.

[SenorSjon]

Because it's still true?

 

It still isn't. I never see them taking the blame for designing a poor tire. It is always someone else's fault. No other supplier in a racing series makes substandard stuff for the 'show'. Imagine if Brembo designed brake discs to fail at 75% race distance, unless you coast around half the time. Just for safety and the show so people can designate which period to use the brakes.

[ExFlagMan]

They should make the tyre so hard that they last 5 races then require the drivers to come into the pits at 1/3 and 2/3 distance in order to change their trousers - This should significantly improve the design of zips and other trouser related paraphernalia, imagine what Newey could do with an F duct...

Perhaps Firestone still have the recipe for the Torino tyre - not sure how it would take to the wider F1 rim width though.

[Fastcake]

It still isn't. I never see them taking the blame for designing a poor tire. It is always someone else's fault. No other supplier in a racing series makes substandard stuff for the 'show'. Imagine if Brembo designed brake discs to fail at 75% race distance, unless you coast around half the time. Just for safety and the show so people can designate which period to use the brakes.

 

That's because no other supplier has received a mandate to construct said tyres.

[ExFlagMan]

That's because no other supplier has received a mandate to construct said tyres.

Not quite true - they all had the opportunity, it's just that the others managed to scramble out the door before Pirelli.

[mp4x]

Obviously not been watching F1 for very long then!
Tonnes of marbles a Pirelli era only phenomena? I don't think so! Back in the 'good old days' of the tyre-wars era I can remember being asked to help sweep the track on the entrance to Stowe corner at Silverstone during the Sunday lunch break as the track sweepers could not cope with the marbles, and this was after a single 30 min warm-up session - the track having been thoroughly swept overnight.

You think Pirelli could not make rock-hard tyres if they where asked to? In the tyre war era the biggest complaint against them was their tyres where too hard to be competitive.

I’m watching Formula One since 1997, so I've never watched “old” races grandpa.

 

But back on “Pirelli marbles”, I didn't say they should produce tires that last a complete race distance. I just want them to make the type of tire that rubbers-in not just shredding. Why do you think I said it’s only Pirelli tires that make marbles? Even if they change to stone-hard tires it leaves marbles on the track but nothing compared to what we have today.

[Petroltorque]

 

I’m watching Formula One since 1997, so I've never watched “old” races grandpa.

 

But back on “Pirelli marbles”, I didn't say they should produce tires that last a complete race distance. I just want them to make the type of tire that rubbers-in not just shredding. Why do you think I said it’s only Pirelli tires that make marbles? Even if they change to stone-hard tires it leaves marbles on the track but nothing compared to what we have today.

 

Some of us here have been following F1 since the early eighties. The level of marbles on track is nothing compared to what we saw then. As I've said before the 'problems' Pirelli have experienced is related to developing a product with limited on track testing. The self interest of teams means that if Pirelli detect an unforeseen  problem they can't change without unanimous agreement. That's about as likely as a charitable donation from BCE.

[Jon83]

Pirelli decided for themselves to spice up the show. They were looking for quantity over quality to get named as often as possible. And everytime threatening with 2010. Like we had no racing before 2010...

 

That is incorrect.
 

[SenorSjon]

Hembery himself threatened that it was Chokotoff tires OR rock hard processional tires like 2010. A bit binary don't you think? Suggesting every season was like 2010 untill the goddess Pirelli arrived.

[Timothy]

As long as drivers are only prepared to fight for positions on the opening laps or coming out pits stops with fresh rubber, I'd say its inexcusable to still defend this tyre supplier. This overplayed narrative trying shift responsibility on the mandate given by teams and Bernie simply doesn't fly anymore. You see, there's a big difference between a reasonably consistent degrading tyre in variable conditions and a tyre that needs to be nursed from the get go to the extent of keeping distances of no less than two seconds behind competitors.

 

Hembery has successfully indoctrinated a believe of its either one or the other. Tyres that last a hole Gp or the inconsistent volatile crap we've had the displeasure of enduring the past few years.

 

Apologies if this sounds like a rant.

Edited by Timothy, 24 December 2013 - 17:41.