463 replies to this topic

[Clatter]

Tsarwash, on Jul 2 2013, 21:09, said:

Regarding the green concrete areas, would it be possible to paint them with something similar to anti climb paint or possibly a very abrasive surface ? That would not be unsafe, and nobody would dream of cutting the corner so close to such race changing surfaces.

If you want to keep them off then it needs to be a low grip paint, the slipperier the better. Making it high grip would encourage them to use it more.

The best way would be to enforce the rules regarding what is and isn't the track. If they stay within the track limits IE. between the white lines. then they wouldn't have to worry about kerb damage.

Edited by Clatter, 02 July 2013 - 20:18.

[Sakae]

TC3000, on Jul 2 2013, 22:05, said:

...Camber and Pressure limits in the "pinnacle of motor racing" - wow, sounds more like what you get in Clio Cup or Formula Ford on a demanding track once a year.

You read my mind; when I saw it, first, having concerns about my health, I thought was that I have to drink much less coffee, because this really shook me up.

[Tsarwash]

Clatter, on Jul 2 2013, 21:15, said:

If you want to keep them off then it needs to be a low grip paint, the slipperier the better. Making it high grip would encourage them to use it more.

I think that putting oil on the insides of corners would possibly be dangerous, but if you put glue on them, then anybody running over them would have glue on their tyres, and would quickly pick up a load of crap on the tyres which would affect performance but not safety.

[superdelphinus]

g1n, on Jul 2 2013, 20:55, said:

Why on earth would there be a difference between a Left and a Right tyre, and why are we hearing this for the first time ever?

Probably because it isn't interesting to 99.99% of people

[MikeV1987]

Lights, on Jul 2 2013, 15:42, said:

Basically Pirelli hugely underestimated the constant drive of F1 teams to find that tiny bit more performance in any way possible.

Agreed, but the teams deserve most if not all of the blame if they went against Pirelli's recommendations to find that tiny bit more performance.

[Ross Stonefeld]

TC3000, on Jul 2 2013, 15:05, said:

Camber and Pressure limits in the "pinnacle of motor racing" - wow, sounds more like what you get in Clio Cup or Formula Ford on a demanding track once a year.

Suppliers always have upper and lower limits, even in nominally open series.

[Frank Tuesday]

Tsarwash, on Jul 2 2013, 15:19, said:

I think that putting oil on the insides of corners would possibly be dangerous, but if you put glue on them, then anybody running over them would have glue on their tyres, and would quickly pick up a load of crap on the tyres which would affect performance but not safety.

Get rid of curbs. Paint the white line. 3m of grass. Paved runoff.

Separate issue, but I think that there should be defined track re-entry points for cars that can't stay on the racing surface. If you re-enter the track outside of the re-entry zone, stop-and-go penalty.

[Nemo1965]

MikeV1987, on Jul 2 2013, 22:29, said:

Agreed, but the teams deserve most if not all of the blame if they went against Pirelli's recommendations to find that tiny bit more performance.

This. Basically, without the testing, Pirelli has to either rely on older cars or on the specifications of loads given by the teams. And who can blame the teams not being completely open in a series with one tyres? In ye-old-days, the enginers would be very fortright with the tyre-supplier, because that would give them an edge over teams that drove with other make tyres.

If Mercedes - for example - discover that swapping the left and rear-tyres - gives an advantage, they will not tell Pirelli. They will drive the car, and wait with baided breath untill someone with a camera points it out. The same applies for tyre-pressures, camber, and loads that this or another F1 car is able to generate. They will not tell Pirelli, because a. what would stop Pirelli to share some knowledge with other teams? B. If Pirelli does not share that knowledge, it just as bad.

Perhaps when a car is weighted, the FIA-guys can also check the pressures and cambers?

[Ross Stonefeld]

TC3000, on Jul 2 2013, 15:43, said:

Sure - but how many suppliers want them/need them to be enforced by the governing body and how many race series have them enshrined into their rules?

If the teams arent going to listen but the supplier is going to get all the **** for the out-of-spec failures, what else should they do? Take the teams to court? Not supply tires for a weekend?

[Coops3]

Gilles4Ever, on Jul 2 2013, 20:59, said:

We have been talking about swopping for rear tyres for ages. It's been discussed extensively on the forum. Can't be done with kevlar tyres because they are symmetrical

That Pirelli statement says the tyres they're introducing this weekend will use kevlar but will also be asymmetrical. The symmetrical construction used in 2012 will return in Hungary.

[Bart]

Since Pirelli are the only tyre supplier, they could stamp a big "L" on the left tyres and "R" on the right ones so any team that's running them the other way around is obvious, and I would have thought that the regulations would allow for any such car to be forbidden from taking to the track as "dangerous" (akin to the black and orange flag).

[WitnessX]

TC3000, on Jul 2 2013, 22:05, said:

Funny- if you swap the tyre left to right, the inner shoulder is still the inner shoulder - isn't it? The level of idioticy is just breathtaking.
The teams will hardly go and demount the tyres, which you would need to do, to get the inner (facing the car) shoulder to the outside.
I understand and have sympathy for the fact, that they don't like to see their tyres be run in the wrong direction, but the rules were in place since a long time, so they should have considered this before they made their tyres, but this explanation in terms of "putting pressure onto the wrong sidewall" is absolute rubbish.
Running the tyre the wrong way round, can clearly have been a contributing factor in the earlier delaminations, but not so much to the body ply breakage in the tyre shoulder, we have seen now.
I also thought, that the direction of rotating sensitivity came with the "steel belts", so it's a bit surprising that this is still a topic with the kevlar belts, unless they do use different body ply angles for acceleration and braking, this would be a valid reason, and is not uncommon in a racing tyre.
If this is the case (and the direction of rotation was not only meant to protect the splice from opining up) it's interesting/"funny" that the teams found better performance the other way round.

Camber and Pressure limits in the "pinnacle of motor racing" - wow, sounds more like what you get in Clio Cup or Formula Ford on a demanding track once a year.

I assume what they are saying is that they are designed for clockwise or anti-clockwise circuits, over a lap there will be more strain on the outer tyres, for example on a clockwise circuit the left side will take more damage than the right. (internal/External)

If we assume a clockwise circuit looking at the top of the car the way it should be is:

(E=External side, I= Internal side.)

(car front)
EI.....EI
....
....
EI .... EI (direction upwards)
(back)

If you swap the wheels at the rear around ...

(front)
EI....EI
....
....
IE .... IE (<- These should be upside-down IE ) direction=downwards
(back)

So the "I"nternal sides end up on the more stressed side.

Edited by WitnessX, 02 July 2013 - 21:23.

[Kalmake]

Al., on Jul 2 2013, 09:15, said:

But can someone point me to a fatality as a result of a tyre failure because that I can't remember.

Mark Donohue. That is all in F1 as far as I know.

[Boxerevo]

Kalmake, on Jul 2 2013, 18:18, said:

Mark Donohue. That is all in F1 as far as I know.

Jim Clark ?

[Ross Stonefeld]

WitnessX, on Jul 2 2013, 16:17, said:

I assume what they are saying is that they are designed for clockwise or anti-clockwise circuits, over a lap there will be more strain on the outer tyres, for example on a clockwise circuit the left side will take more damage than the right. (internal/External)

If we assume a clockwise circuit looking at the top of the car the way it should be is:

(E=External side, I= Internal side.)

(car front)
EI.....EI
....
....
EI .... EI (direction upwards)
(back)

If you swap the wheels at the rear around ...

(front)
EI....EI
....
....
IE .... IE (<- These should be upside-down IE but the characters don't exist!) direction=downwards
(back)

So the "I"nternal sides end up on the more stressed side.

No, it'd still be EI IE at the rear. They aren't taking them off the rims, Just turning them around. So if there's an arrow on the tire like this ^ it now looks like V because the tire has been rotated 180 degrees. But it's on the other side of the car now. So the outside is still the outside. It's just rotating in the opposite direction.

[midgrid]

Boxerevo, on Jul 2 2013, 22:19, said:

Jim Clark ?

Clark was killed during an F2 race, but his crash was indeed (probably) due to a tyre failure.

[redreni]

Can't believe people are reading Pirelli's list of excuses and blaming the teams. They can set a non-regulatory limit on tyre pressures and suspension geometry all they like, but at the end of the day it's a race, and if it's quicker to run the car with lower pressures or greater camber angles that will be done. If it's quicker to mount the tyres on the wrong side, that will be done too. They're designed as racing tyres, and the teams ought to be entitled to expect that they will degrade and drop off performance-wise first before they reach the point where they explode. F1 managed alright for 60 years without regulations governing tyre pressures or camber angles until Pirelli came along.

However if that's not the case; if the tyres really weren't designed to hold together under the conditions in which they were being used, why didn't Pirelli express safety concerns over these practices beforehand? Unless they came down in the last shower, they can't possibly have expected the teams to stick to the manufacturer's recommendations when there's no regulatory requirement to do so, knowing that in doing so they would be throwing away laptime.

Pirelli's recommended camber and pressure limits are no good if sticking to them will put you seconds a lap off the pace. I went to live for a while in Calgary, Alberta, Canada once, in the winter, and the phone I took with me said in the manufacturer's warranty that it shouldn't be exposed to temparatures below -5C. There was a six week period where it barely went above -15C, and I was regularly using it in temparatures of -25 or -30. Luckily the phone was fine, but as a customer I can't accept that if it had exploded the minute I took it out of my pocket in the street, it would be my fault for ignoring the manufacturer's recommendations. At the end of the day the product has to be fit for purpose - if I'd stuck to the recommendations I could only have used it indoors. Same goes for racing tyres.

[jhodges]

TC3000, on Jul 2 2013, 09:21, said:

Making tyres, which don't perform better outside of the recommended settings, would be a good start - Don't you think?
That's a surefire way, to make sure people stay within the limits.
Anticipating that teams are going to venture out of the recommendations and account for this fact in the initial design isn't to much of an ask either.
It's not as if this is a new development, which just started last weekend is it?

Is it even possible to design a product for any eventuality? Everything you use during your day has performance window outside of which it fails. I do not understand how you or anyone else can hold Pirelli responsible for failures that occur during the intentional mis-use of it's product.

[Tsarwash]

redreni, on Jul 2 2013, 22:24, said:

Can't believe people are reading Pirelli's list of excuses and blaming the teams. They can set a non-regulatory limit on tyre pressures and suspension geometry all they like, but at the end of the day it's a race, and if it's quicker to run the car with lower pressures or greater camber angles that will be done. If it's quicker to mount the tyres on the wrong side, that will be done too. They're designed as racing tyres, and the teams ought to be entitled to expect that they will degrade and drop off performance-wise first before they reach the point where they explode. F1 managed alright for 60 years without regulations governing tyre pressures or camber angles until Pirelli came along.

However if that's not the case; if the tyres really weren't designed to hold together under the conditions in which they were being used, why didn't Pirelli express safety concerns over these practices beforehand? Unless they came down in the last shower, they can't possibly have expected the teams to stick to the manufacturer's recommendations when there's no regulatory requirement to do so, knowing that in doing so they would be throwing away laptime.

Pirelli's recommended camber and pressure limits are no good if sticking to them will put you seconds a lap off the pace. I went to live for a while in Calgary, Alberta, Canada once, in the winter, and the phone I took with me said in the manufacturer's warranty that it shouldn't be exposed to temparatures below -5C. There was a six week period where it barely went above -15C, and I was regularly using it in temparatures of -25 or -30. Luckily the phone was fine, but as a customer I can't accept that if it had exploded the minute I took it out of my pocket in the street, it would be my fault for ignoring the manufacturer's recommendations. At the end of the day the product has to be fit for purpose - if I'd stuck to the recommendations I could only have used it indoors. Same goes for racing tyres.

You're saying that the teams are allowed to use the tyres in any way whatsoever, while Pirelli are not allowed to even properly test with recent cars, and if something goes wrong, it is Pirelli that takes all of the flak, not the team ? By those standards, F1 will be racing on shop bought tyres when Pirelli's contract runs out because no manufacturer in the world is going to take on those terms.
Pirelli are the ones whose reputation takes the hit when there are a string of tyre failures. They have a right to try to ensure that the teams do not push the boundaries so much, that multiple tyre failures become likely.

[Coops3]

Tsarwash, on Jul 2 2013, 22:41, said:

You're saying that the teams are allowed to use the tyres in any way whatsoever, while Pirelli are not allowed to even properly test with recent cars, and if something goes wrong, it is Pirelli that takes all of the flak, not the team ? By those standards, F1 will be racing on shop bought tyres when Pirelli's contract runs out because no manufacturer in the world is going to take on those terms.
Pirelli are the ones whose reputation takes the hit when there are a string of tyre failures. They have a right to try to ensure that the teams do not push the boundaries so much, that multiple tyre failures become likely.

They managed it last year? (or at least, did a better job last year).

[TheThirdTenor1]

They seem to have put the blame solely on the teams. Yet, for some reason they still feel it necessary to change the tyres back to the 2012 construction.

[Henrik B]

Ross Stonefeld, on Jul 2 2013, 23:20, said:

No, it'd still be EI IE at the rear. They aren't taking them off the rims, Just turning them around. So if there's an arrow on the tire like this ^ it now looks like V because the tire has been rotated 180 degrees. But it's on the other side of the car now. So the outside is still the outside. It's just rotating in the opposite direction.

This isn't what he says. He means that if you design different tyres for clock- and anti-clockwise circuits, so you have the stiffer part on the OUTSIDE on one tyre and the INSIDE of the other - IE IE - and the teams swap them putting all load on the wrong sidewall, Pirellis press release makes sense.

On the other hand, I would actually go with them taking the tyres off the rim. If they get performance out of it, there's nothing stopping them.

Also, I would like to point out that Pirelli doesn't actually put much "blame" on the teams. Pirelli seem to fully accept that they should have forbidden the tyre-swapping, and that they also were caught unaware. It's a list of "these are the factors, and our tyre could not handle everything at once. We will make a tyre that can. Meanwhile, stop doing this.".

Edited by Henrik B, 02 July 2013 - 21:56.

[Atreiu]

TheThirdTenor1, on Jul 2 2013, 18:46, said:

They seem to have put the blame solely on the teams. Yet, for some reason they still feel it necessary to change the tyres back to the 2012 construction.

Teams are not to be trusted, they will literally rather risk failure than being dead last and lost. =P

[Nemo1965]

Kalmake, on Jul 2 2013, 23:18, said:

Mark Donohue. That is all in F1 as far as I know.

That was a close call for F1. In an earlier post I wrote why.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Remind me again, with the quick version, why you'd swap your rear tires around?

[redreni]

Tsarwash, on Jul 2 2013, 22:41, said:

You're saying that the teams are allowed to use the tyres in any way whatsoever, while Pirelli are not allowed to even properly test with recent cars, and if something goes wrong, it is Pirelli that takes all of the flak, not the team ? By those standards, F1 will be racing on shop bought tyres when Pirelli's contract runs out because no manufacturer in the world is going to take on those terms.
Pirelli are the ones whose reputation takes the hit when there are a string of tyre failures. They have a right to try to ensure that the teams do not push the boundaries so much, that multiple tyre failures become likely.

No, I'm saying having manufacturer recommended limits of camber and pressure which are non-regulatory is no way to prevent blowouts, because everybody, including Pirelli, knew perfectly well in advance that those recommendations wouldn't be heeded -they can't possibly be heeded if you rely on teams to voluntarily cede a laptime advantage to their rivals. They should prevent blowouts either by making tyres that won't fail under any type of loading or use the teams can throw at them, or they should make them so that if you run pressures or cambers outside the design recommendations performance gets worse instead of better.

But if they can't manage the above there's another alternative which they also failed to embark upon. They chose to come into F1, sell tyres to the teams at or below cost, spend a fortune on trackside advertising, and the reason they did so was to get the brand exposure and to advertise their company and the tyres they make. They knew what the rules were. They also knew that having their tyres fail would inevitably reflect badly on them no matter who they might choose to blame afterwards. So if they felt the lack of testing meant that mandatory camber and pressure limits were needed, even though F1 had managed without for 60 years, they should have said so before we had five tyres go pop in one race.

The recommended limits were just that - recommendations. Pirelli knew all along the limits were being routinely exceeded. If they thought this was going to lead to failures they should have approached the FIA to have the limits enforced through the regulations.

[DanardiF1]

TC3000, on Jul 2 2013, 21:05, said:

Funny- if you swap the tyre left to right, the inner shoulder is still the inner shoulder - isn't it? The level of idioticy is just breathtaking.
The teams will hardly go and demount the tyres, which you would need to do, to get the inner (facing the car) shoulder to the outside.
I understand and have sympathy for the fact, that they don't like to see their tyres be run in the wrong direction, but the rules were in place since a long time, so they should have considered this before they made their tyres, but this explanation in terms of "putting pressure onto the wrong sidewall" is absolute rubbish.
Running the tyre the wrong way round, can clearly have been a contributing factor in the earlier delaminations, but not so much to the body ply breakage in the tyre shoulder, we have seen now.
I also thought, that the direction of rotating sensitivity came with the "steel belts", so it's a bit surprising that this is still a topic with the kevlar belts, unless they do use different body ply angles for acceleration and braking, this would be a valid reason, and is not uncommon in a racing tyre.
If this is the case (and the direction of rotation was not only meant to protect the splice from opining up) it's interesting/"funny" that the teams found better performance the other way round.

Camber and Pressure limits in the "pinnacle of motor racing" - wow, sounds more like what you get in Clio Cup or Formula Ford on a demanding track once a year.

No what they were doing is keeping the tyre in the same rotation, but swapping to the other side of the car, so the inside face of the right hand side was now the outside face of the left, so yes the tyres were mounted the wrong way round.

Edited by DanardiF1, 02 July 2013 - 22:46.

[Ross Stonefeld]

I thought they were running them 'backwards' for an entire stints for a performance reason. Swapping them for the first stint kinda makes sense(but wouldn't they do the fronts too?) but I don't know if the rules would allow that change.

[EthanM]

Someone (I forgot who ... I have heard way more than I ever needed to hear about tyres in the last 5 months, might have been Anderson on BBC, might have been someone on Italian SKY) had said swapping the tyres around was mostly done on the rears and it was mostly done for heat management, apparently the teams have found tyres turning the wrong way around have more predictable temperature curves.
But anyway the impression I got was the tyres were run swapped all through the quali/race, not that quali tyres were swapped around to even out wear on the Q3 set.

[DanardiF1]

TC3000, on Jul 3 2013, 00:06, said:

So all the teams, will bring tyre mounting & balancing machines to the track, or is Pirelli emounting the tyres for them during the weekend, or mounting them the "wrong way" to start with?

if you ask me, the arrow in this photo is pointing against the direction of rotation - No?

I don't disagree with you on this photo. Mercedes clearly ran the rear tyres in the opposite rotation at Monaco.

Mercedes may have used them that way in Monaco, but Pirelli clearly state that the tyres in Silverstone were being used with inside shoulders facing out.

Pirelli also said they were not stopping the teams from running them this way, so presumably Pirelli were doing any remounting and balancing for the teams based on how they wanted to run the tyres...

[Nick Planas]

I recall that engine manufacturers have a rev limit on their engines. Of course, sometimes drivers would exceed that to gain an advantage. Sometimes they would get away with it, sometimes they would not. If the engine blew because the drivers over-revved it, could you really blame the engine manufacturer?
I recall Red Bull a few years back having issues with tyres - it was then found they'd exceeded the recommended camber angles issued by the tyre manufacturer.
If you make any product, it is designed to operate in a particular way, and I think if a team chooses to ignore that, or take a risk on it, they should hardly be blaming Pirelli.
Considering how many racing tyres DON'T fail in F1, shouldn't we cut Pirelli some slack?

[Henrik B]

TC3000, on Jul 3 2013, 00:16, said:

So, you think, teams fly their own mounting and balancing equipment around the world, and the first thing they do, when they get the tyres from Pirelli, is to demount them and mount them the other way round? That's highly unlikely - IMO
I'm pretty sure Pirelli would stop this practice, because that would pose a uncontainable risk.
Their is a reason, that tyre suppliers bring their own equipment and personal to the track for mounting tyres, instead of just handing the tyres over to the teams, and it's not just convenience for the teams.

No, I don't think that. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the mounting is done at each team with assigned manufacturer technicians, cince the teams have their own rims. And Pirelli said that they underestimated the risk of doing that, so my GUESS is that Pirelli flipped the tyres when mounting them at the teams request. They specifically said they didn't (until now) think it was a uncontainable risk.

With Pirelli going into some detail about asymmetrical tyres and sidewall loads my initial reaction is not to assume they outright lie for some reason, I think of ways it makes sense. Just running them backwards isn't compatible with the press release. And that would mean 1) putting the inner face outward 2) WitnessX' idea about different clock/anticlockwise tyres 3) some other solution.

[OvDrone]

Ok, so as a normal dude I had a lot of stuff going on recently in my life (most of them negative) and this whole ****storm-mess-of-a-gig is giving me an overall massive headache.

From my POV the FIA, Pirelli and the politics of the inter 'pro-safety' - 'against-safety' environment in the paddock has gotten me even more knackered. I blame ALL of 'em.

Stop the BS and let's race!





*cough* I read so MANY articles about this issue that I don't know what to think anymore... can someone keep me up to date in a brief layman's uber-simpleton's terms, that would be great, por favor, danke *cough*

Edited by OvDrone, 02 July 2013 - 23:26.

[redreni]

Nick Planas, on Jul 3 2013, 00:10, said:

I recall that engine manufacturers have a rev limit on their engines. Of course, sometimes drivers would exceed that to gain an advantage. Sometimes they would get away with it, sometimes they would not. If the engine blew because the drivers over-revved it, could you really blame the engine manufacturer?
I recall Red Bull a few years back having issues with tyres - it was then found they'd exceeded the recommended camber angles issued by the tyre manufacturer.
If you make any product, it is designed to operate in a particular way, and I think if a team chooses to ignore that, or take a risk on it, they should hardly be blaming Pirelli.
Considering how many racing tyres DON'T fail in F1, shouldn't we cut Pirelli some slack?

The engine comparison is interesting because, of course, it's a not a spec product. Also, when the decision was made to extend engine life to reduce costs, a regulatory limit was introduced.

But in all seriousness, if a team kept suffering engine failures and the engine manufacturer said "stick to the rev limit, then", a lot would depend on the impact on performance of sticking to the limit. If a rival team using a different engine was able to rev higher without having failures (BMW were the class of the field in that respect in the early 2000s) then in no way can it be regarded as acceptable for an engine supplier to shrug its shoulders and effectively say "go slower, then". It's a competitive sport - it's not like when you buy a watch and forget to take it off when you go swimming, the product has to be capable of performing competitively.

When it's a spec component it's a little different in that, as I've mentioned, if it really comes to it the FIA can impose restrictions on the manufacturers' recommendation, and that's one of many ways in which Pirelli could have avoided this problem. They didn't need the teams to agree. They could have said "these tyres are being used out of spec, the tyres are safe as long as they're used as specified, for safety reasons we advise the FIA to mandate the following restrictions on pressures, cambers, direction of rotation etc".

Regarding cutting Pirelli some slack, it was very nearly necessary to red flag the British GP after a dozen laps and not to restart it which, if you believe Silverstone's optimistic figures, would have disappointed 160,000 paying punters at the track, millions of television viewers worldwide, all the broadcasters, the sponsors and, ultimately, FOM and the teams. And the consequences could have been worse still, of course, if the incidents that occurred had caused injury or death. Despite that I haven't seen anybody on this forum react to this by saying, for example, that they shouldn't be awarded the 2014 contract - all people are asking for is an acknowledgement from them that it's principally their problem, and for them to take action to prevent similar problems in the future. In the circumstances, I would say people are cutting them about as much slack as they could reasonably expect given their conduct and given the problems we've had.

[baddog]

TC3000, on Jul 3 2013, 11:39, said:

I would really surprise me (which doesn't make it impossible) if Pirelli would agree to mount the tyres with the inside sidewall out. If the do so, then they are in this as well, because they could just refuse the mount the tyres this way, and tell the team to get lost.

Yeah Pirelli said in their own release that they had not objected to teams doing this, which implies they mounted them as the teams asked. Which indeed makes them responsible for the damage if caused this way.

[EthanM]

DanardiF1, on Jul 2 2013, 23:10, said:

Mercedes may have used them that way in Monaco, but Pirelli clearly state that the tyres in Silverstone were being used with inside shoulders facing out.

They didn't actually. They spoke of the sidewall being designed to sustain specific loads. Simply swapping the tyres around from left to right changes the loads the tyre has to sustain.

1) Rear tyres that were mounted the wrong way round: in other words, the right hand tyre being placed where the left hand one should be and vice versa, on the cars that suffered failures. The tyres supplied this year have an asymmetric structure, which means that they are not designed to be interchangeable. The sidewalls are designed in such a way to deal with specific loads on the internal and external sides of the tyre. So swapping the tyres round has an effect on how they work in certain conditions. In particular, the external part is designed to cope with the very high loads that are generated while cornering at a circuit as demanding as Silverstone, with its rapid left-hand bends and some kerbs that are particularly aggressive.

[superdelphinus]

You would have thought that somewhere along the line, if they knew teams were doing it (even if they felt they couldn't stop it), that they would have warned them what might happen as a result. I can't believe that hasn't happened somewhere along the line

[EthanM]

superdelphinus, on Jul 2 2013, 23:48, said:

You would have thought that somewhere along the line, if they knew teams were doing it (even if they felt they couldn't stop it), that they would have warned them what might happen as a result. I can't believe that hasn't happened somewhere along the line

Following the conclusions of this analysis, Pirelli would like to underline that:

1) Mounting the tyres the wrong way round is a practice that was nonetheless underestimated by everybody: above all Pirelli, which did not forbid this.


so ... no

[superdelphinus]

Forbidding is different from warning, but pretty amazing if they themselves didn't understand the risks. All round fluster ****

[Lee Nicolle]

There is so many ponderables in tyre construction and manufacture. Most race tyres have a direction arrow, as do even many premium road tyres. So the teams that go against the manufacturers recommendation have no real complaint when the tyres fail.
Sometimes the tyre will be faster if misused, but the risk of failure is far higher. The cords in the sidewall as well as the belt dictate the direction. And ofcourse running too much camber will kill a tyre, especially when driving over the kerbs.
As I have said before, stay on the black stuff and most of these problems will not happen, AND fit and inflate the tyre to manufacturers specs will probably resolve the rest. Ifd you under or overinflate a road tyre you void the warranty, as well a banging kerbs and the like.
THEN, make compounds that last longer than 5 bloody laps. That is Pirelli and the FIAs problem. Remember, the underlying tyre problem here is not the failures but the complete lack of durability. The failures are probably all rectified by the above

[canon1753]

Hopefully, when they get this sorted, we won't have tire issues. Maybe Pirelli can make two compounds of tires that dont wear out under a hard glance...

And Pirelli will remember it is their job to be thrown under the bus with tire failures. I believe what Pirelli is saying is true. Where they won't gain points is by saying its the teams fault, (even if it is true). As someone said, you idiot proof the tires, which sounds like what they are doing.

Goodyear did it in NASCAR after Indy 2008. Michelin Indy 2005. Firestone and Bridgestone have been very good tire suppliers for Indy and F1. Pirelli needs to up its game. They were right on the tire test ban, but they don't have a huge window to win back goodwill with the teams. (Plus, as far as is public, is there a 2014 f1 tire supplier?)

[Sakae]

Pirelli statement

[Brother Fox]

So maybe Pirelli doesnt deserve all the hate they're getting (in this case) and we should be asking why the f*** are teams running rights on the left and vice versa.
They seem so exacting in every detail but just chuck a tyre on the wrong side?

[K-One]

examining kerb in Turn 4

http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded

[KnucklesAgain]

Kalmake, on Jul 2 2013, 23:18, said:

Mark Donohue. That is all in F1 as far as I know.

AMuS has a list of tyre dramas: http://www.auto-moto...-1-7358323.html

[Sakae]

K-One, on Jul 3 2013, 08:32, said:

examining kerb in Turn 4

http://www.youtube.c...player_embedded

...kerb - not safe - on that particular location, was his conclusion.

[K-One]

My take is that teams are more to blame than Pirelli. They are taking changes by switching rears and running with too low pressures.

Easy to blame Pirelli for everything, they were supposed to make tyres with min 2 pitstops to make show more interesting

[Sakae]

As long as there is a kerb to ride on, drivers will take advantage of it. Someone had earlier, what I would consider a highly practical solution, which is mandate track owners to add rough surface on certain off-track areas, which would adversely affect tire useable life cycle. Such condition should get very quickly driver's respect for them stay away of those, perhaps through reduction of exist speed, remain on the track, yet still the safety factor remains intact when really needed, as opposed exploiting it to on every lap.

[MikeTekRacing]

too low pressure and extreme camber are very vague ways of expressing a problem
I am sure Pirelli gives a range of settings and i would bet the teams were "aggressive" but within the specs Pirelli provided.

[ExFlagMan]

Sakae, on Jul 3 2013, 07:13, said:

As long as there is a kerb to ride on, drivers will take advantage of it. Someone had earlier, what I would consider a highly practical solution, which is mandate track owners to add rough surface on certain off-track areas, which would adversely affect tire useable life cycle. Such condition should get very quickly driver's respect for them stay away of those, perhaps through reduction of exist speed, remain on the track, yet still the safety factor remains intact when really needed, as opposed exploiting it to on every lap.

And pigs might fly! I seem to recall the have tried high abrasive run-off areas and this just encouraged drivers to use it even more as it gave extra grip.
Given the fact that all cars carry on-board cameras and the advent of very accurate GPS it would be better for the FIA to gets its act together and implement a 'keep off the kerb' policy, just give 1 sec penalty point for each excursion, with an on-screen penalty counter against each car so viewers can see what is happening. Should be doable, after all I seem to recall Donington Park had a car tracking system available for testing that could give a trace of the path taken by a car round the track accurate to quite a small margin, and this was some 20 odd years ago.