Importance of tires

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Nebhotep
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Importance of tires

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With quite a lot of recent talk about the tires for 2011 and beyound I thought it was fitting for a tire thread to be opened.
The goal of it is to establish if the current tire rules and approach are fair to every driver in respect to suiting their driving style and characteristics and hence their championship chances.
I hope it makes sense what I just said.
Discuss.

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ackzsel
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Re: Importance of tires

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Nebhotep wrote:The goal of it is to establish if the current tire rules and approach are fair to every driver in respect to suiting their driving style and characteristics and hence their championship chances.
Well, since everybody will be running the same tires I guess it's fair by definition. Of course some drivers will "like" the Pirelli more or less than the Bridgestones, but that's no different than every other aspect of a racing car.

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Nebhotep
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Re: Importance of tires

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It's true they're the same for everybody but as someone said in another thread when M.Schumacher was at Ferrari the tires were made around him(we know Schumi likes oversteer) so he had the first chance in the championship due to that.So I was asking if a certain driver is faster with a certain type of tire and also the opposite, if a driver is unable to unleash his potential if the tires don't suit him.Would this mean the difference between winning and losing the championship?

Jersey Tom
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Re: Importance of tires

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Nebhotep wrote:It's true they're the same for everybody but as someone said in another thread when M.Schumacher was at Ferrari the tires were made around him(we know Schumi likes oversteer) so he had the first chance in the championship due to that.
Don't believe everything you hear.
Grip is a four letter word. All opinions are my own and not those of current or previous employers.

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scotty86
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Re: Importance of tires

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It is true that tyres are (relatively speaking) key to a driver's ability to perform to their total potential. However, i will simply say this - some drivers are able to adapt, and others seemingly cannot. In other words, the truly best drivers can make the best of a bad situation and remain competitive!

autogyro
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Re: Importance of tires

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All the teams have the same tyres and so there is a level playing field.
In my limited racing experience, it is how the tyres work with a certain car rather than any driver preference, although the tyres have a major input to the over all performance of the package.
Any driver capable of driving an F1 car at a competitive speed should be well capable of dealing with the effects of the tyres on the cars handling.

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raymondu999
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Re: Importance of tires

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Well long story short you said it yourself that Schumi likes oversteer. What if somebody produced tyres that had fronts 5 times as grippy as the rears? Drivers who like stability like Webber/Button will be doomed while Schumi/Vettel/Hamilton will thrive. The reverse is also true.

I think what Nebhotep is referring to is back when we had Michelins vs Bridgestone. Back then, Bridgestone's only "big team" customer was Ferrari. Why cater to the small teams when you could have success with Ferrari? So they worked together with the suspension group of Ferrari etc I believe so that the car maximised the tyres.
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Nebhotep
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Re: Importance of tires

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raymondu999 wrote:What if somebody produced tyres that had fronts 5 times as grippy as the rears? Drivers who like stability like Webber/Button will be doomed while Schumi/Vettel/Hamilton will thrive. The reverse is also true.
Exactly my point.Could it be the case that the tires' construction decides the world champion in 2011 and beyond?

marcush.
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Re: Importance of tires

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I think it is entirely possible.
Tyres performance envelopes are different and some brands seem to not like combined slip longtudinally and sideslip as much as others.Let`s assume the Pirelli is more like the Michelin tyre was showing a more pronounced liking to combined slipangles but maybe a bit less in peak numbers it is poerfectly possible that some of the smooth blending style drivers suddenly pop up as the ones .
the Pirelli rears were described as being weaker in comarison to the Brdigestomes..is that in terms of grip or stiffness feedback or endurance ...we do not know.
For sure the new rubber willmix up the ranking of the individual drivers.Not that they cannot adapt but those who find the tyre performing with their prefered style should find this very convenient as you do not have to change modify your action from your natural instincts...

Jersey Tom
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Re: Importance of tires

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Don't quite have the time or desire to debunk the sillyness here, but suffice to say, the answer to the following question-
Nebhotep wrote:Could it be the case that the tires' construction decides the world champion in 2011 and beyond?
Is "no."
Grip is a four letter word. All opinions are my own and not those of current or previous employers.

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Nebhotep
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Re: Importance of tires

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It seems everybody has his own opinion about this.I made a mistake in thinking everybody should think the same.I guess only time will tell what importance the new tires will have next year.

Jersey Tom
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Re: Importance of tires

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By the way, I'm going to go ahead and say the line "Schumi prefers oversteer" is complete and utter BS, that gets perpetuated all over the place. It makes me cringe every time I see it.

No engineer or driver at a competitive level is going to set their car up to be tail happy, and if they did, they would be slow as --- and completely uncompetitive. I dare you to find a single onboard of MS drifting corners and hanging the rear end out intentionally.

Does he like high response rates? Maybe even a little underdamped in yaw? High sensitivity to brake and throttle inputs? Those I could all believe. An unbalanced car? No, I don't believe that. In any event the differences in balance preference between these drivers is likely very small, otherwise if you're not utilizing the front and rear axles to their maximum you're just going to be slow.

Furthermore, it's not like the tire manufacturer sets your car balance. Between air pressure, camber, caster, springs, bars, differential, aero... there are a million ways to swing the balance wildly one way or another. Can you get stuck a bit in response rates and certain parameters? Certainly. Some drivers may be more or less comfortable with varying degrees of responsiveness and damping or linearity. But if you want some more understeer... throw some diff preload or extra locking in and you can get the car to understeer like a dump truck.

Bottom line, Pirelli isn't in a competitive situation. No reason to work exclusively with one team, beyond maybe the folks who can give them the best feedback and data. It will be a new experience for all the drivers. As always, the best and more adaptable drivers will perform at a high level.
Grip is a four letter word. All opinions are my own and not those of current or previous employers.

ak07
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Re: Importance of tires

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Nebhotep wrote:Could it be the case that the tires' construction decides the world champion in 2011 and beyond?
- Will it be the sole determining factor? No.
Will it be one of the few large changes from 2010 to 2011 that teams and drivers will need to adapt to? Yes.
Will the comparative success of the teams and drivers adaptation to the tires specifically have a large effect on their 2011 success? Yes, for sure.
Jersey Tom wrote:y the way, I'm going to go ahead and say the line "Schumi prefers oversteer" is complete and utter BS, that gets perpetuated all over the place. It makes me cringe every time I see it.
-Complete and utter BS? I'm not sure if I would go that far. The point that is attempted to be made by this, overly popular, statement, is based on a valid idea. At least in my opinion anyway.

The term "oversteer" is incorrectly used. I think the characteristics Shumi prefers in comparison to some other drivers is a heavily front-end dependent car. By that I mean, a car that uses front-end geometry to communicate the grip at both front and rear very heavily. This is mostly in terms of driver "feel"



The younger drivers, have grown up driving cars with tires that have peaky slip angles, stiff tires and suspension and high-speed, aerodynamic over mechanical grip biased suspension. The stiffer and smaller the tires, the stiffer the suspension, the higher the downforce, the less front-end geometry is often used. Less caster, which is used to compensate for higher aerodynamic load and the stiffer more weight sensitive tires. This means often times the easier to adapt to, the safer and easier car to drive and feel/find the limit will leave a car that will push the front-end before losing the rear on medium to highspeed corners.

You can say they all slide out of the slower corners, in heavy power down situations, but that is very different than a closer to "steady-state" medium-high speed corner balance.

Schumi would like to be able to dial in more or less steering angle to play with the cars rotation. This can really only happen if the car, near the limit, will lose rear grip before front. This, to work, requires a car that is comparatively soft in the rear and stiff in the front. This doesn't mean the car is balanced incorrectly and it also doesn't mean it is not using the full potential of the available grip at both axles. It only means that when near the limit, instead of the front falling off in terms of grip, the rear will do so first.

Considering different levels of mechanical vs. aerodynamic grip, the length and degree of corners, steering angles etc. etc. It is impossible setup a car that will lose grip at both ends at the same time, consistently. Not to mention, more importantly, simultaneous grip lose from both axles would be near impossible for a driver to push to the limit.

The current car, in comparison to what Schumi would prefer, is more dependent on a narrow range of steering angles and more sensitive to throttle and brake applications. This type of car tends to understeer at the limit. Schumi is the type of driver that would probably struggle with "feel" and would describe the car as "numb", "unresponsive" or "uncommunicative"

Schumi would like to play with both steering angles and the throttle/brake to find the limit of the car.

A younger driver, for instance, Nico Rosberg, would probably describe a car schumi likes as "twitchy", "pointy" or "unstable"...

Tires have a large effect on this, the difference in how the front tires respond to more or less slip angle, steering angle etc. and how the rear loses and regains grip laterally, whether smooth lose, with maybe less overall grip, or very peaky, with more overall grip.

I wonder if this made any sense?

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WhiteBlue
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Re: Importance of tires

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I think the role of the tyres is over rated due to the current misbalance of the aero situation. The primary problem of F1 is too much DF and drag which is expressed by the lateral acceleration going up to almost 6g. The governing body has tried to fix the situation for more than a decade and has advocated a DF level of 1.25 metric tons. Due to resistance from the teams to drop DF consistently to reasonable levels we have seen the governing body evade to other measures in order to cut cornering performance. They tried to curb the performance by cutting the contact patch with the introduction of grooved tyres and they made power cuts by engine formulae to bring power/weight down three times since 1989.

In 1988 we had a car weight of 540 kg and 900 bhp power giving a power/weight ratio of 1.7. The lateral acceleration produced from a result of tyre performance and downforce was 2.5 g. I simply refuse to believe that tyre performance made the big difference to the 5.8 g that we have today. It may be a small factor but in reality it is the DF and the associated drag that screws up the racing. If you consistently take away the excessive DF (to 1.25 tons) and adjust the tyres back to 2.5 g of lateral acceleration you can have more power and you get over powered chassis that would give fantastic on track racing.
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Arunas
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Re: Importance of tires

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ak07 wrote: Schumi would like to be able to dial in more or less steering angle to play with the cars rotation. This can really only happen if the car, near the limit, will lose rear grip before front. This, to work, requires a car that is comparatively soft in the rear and stiff in the front. This doesn't mean the car is balanced incorrectly and it also doesn't mean it is not using the full potential of the available grip at both axles. It only means that when near the limit, instead of the front falling off in terms of grip, the rear will do so first.
Not sure I understand you here. This is what Schumi said? Or it is your understanding what he thinks about it? Or this is your driving experience?

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