Pirelli 2013

[MOWOG]

I think that Merc is in deep dodo.

Dr. Helmet Darko agrees with you:

Marko compares Mercedes test with 2007 spygate


F1 could be about to be rocked by a penalty on the scale of the 'spy scandal' of 2007.

The FIA is expected to convene a meeting of the international tribunal, to consider the matter of Mercedes' 'secret' Pirelli tyre test.

Ferrari, along with Red Bull, filed the official protest in Monaco. "You might expect a sporting penalty," Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali told the Associated Press. "But because it is not really clear what could be the effect on the race weekend, it may be bigger than that," he added. "Because there is no precedent, I have no idea what should happen."

Red Bull's Dr Helmut Marko, however, believes there is a precedent. "There will be a hearing," he told Bild newspaper, "although I do not know when and where. "It is in the direction of the spy scandal of 2007 between McLaren and Ferrari," added Marko. The outspoken Austrian is referring to 2007, when the FIA considered banning McLaren but ultimately excluded the British team from the constructors' championship and issued a record $100 million fine.

Marko makes the 'spygate' comparison because he alleges Mercedes' advantage from the exclusive 1000km test with its 2013 car and race drivers will be far-reaching. "A test like that is even more of an advantage if it is immediately after a race, because you have all of the comparative data, so you can make very decisive improvements. "Until now the tyres have had a steel (internal) belt but now it's going to be kevlar, which is the tyres that were tested," he is quoted by Swiss newspaper Blick.

"That is what we are going to have in Montreal, so Mercedes does not only have an advantage for Monaco," added Marko.

Personally, I think nothing substantial will come of all this, save for a stern warning never, ever, never to do such a thing again.

[SectorOne]

ignore,

[Pup]

That assumes that Michelin want the contract. To my knowledge, they still don't want in F1 unless they have someone to compete against, and no one wants to compete against them.

We do not know what Michelin have agreed with Todt in 2010. For the public their last stance was competition or we do not want it. But that may have changed with time going by and heads changing in their board meeting.

Interestingly enough, Michelin's twitter posts have been all F1 over the past day. This one in particular was interesting...

“They would need to incorporate sustainability – using fewer tyres. The sizes should also be more like road tyres”.

So it does look like they've found anther strategy that would make F1 work for them.

I used to argue that F1 should use threaded tires and not have separate slicks and rain tires, like back in the day.

[Tim.Wright]

You don´t even need to look for the arrow.

Read the Pirelli text and you´ll see that when the car is in motion the text goes the wrong way.
So it will be easy to spot in Canada next.

Is it normally written as illeriP on the left side?

[SectorOne]

Yea sorry about that, i had a bigger post with pictures and realized i was completely wrong. Forgot to remove the post above as well.

[diffuser]

That assumes that Michelin want the contract. To my knowledge, they still don't want in F1 unless they have someone to compete against, and no one wants to compete against them.

We do not know what Michelin have agreed with Todt in 2010. For the public their last stance was competition or we do not want it. But that may have changed with time going by and heads changing in their board meeting.

Interestingly enough, Michelin's twitter posts have been all F1 over the past day. This one in particular was interesting...

“They would need to incorporate sustainability – using fewer tyres. The sizes should also be more like road tyres”.

So it does look like they've found anther strategy that would make F1 work for them.

I used to argue that F1 should use threaded tires and not have separate slicks and rain tires, like back in the day.

The F1 2014 wheel rules are below. The "The outer lip diameter is 358mm (+/-1mm).e " Seems to tell me that alot smaller that what we're presently seeing on road cars. My wife's Car has 450mm wheels.

Wheel dimensions and geometry must comply with the following specifications :
- The minimum wheel thickness is 3.0mm.
- The minimum bead thickness is 4.0mm (measured from hump to outer edge of the lip).
- The ETRTO standard bead profile is prescribed.
- The tyre mounting widths are 12” (304.8mm +/-0.5mm) front; 13.7” (348.0mm +/-
0.5mm) rear.
- The wheel lip thickness is 9mm (+/-1mm).
- The outer lip diameter is 358mm (+/-1mm).
- A lip recess of maximum 1.0mm depth between a radius of 165mm and a radius of
173mm from wheel axis is permitted (for wheel branding, logo, part number, etc.).
- With the exception of the wheel lip, only a single turned profile with a maximum
thickness of 8mm is allowed radially outboard of the exclusion zones specified in Article
12.4.5.
- The design of the wheel must meet the general requirements of the tyre supplier for the
mounting and dismounting of tyres including allowance for sensors and valves.
- The wheel design cannot be handed between left and right designs.

[WhiteBlue]

If FIA doesn't do something substantial to prevent teams from testing, there will be a wrath of new testing.

That is a whole bunch of nonsense in my view. The Pirelli test was for a specific purpose and it is still unclear how "grey" the legality of the test actually was. It can still turn out that all the razzmatazz was simply for political purposes of the federation in order to get a tyre supplier of their choice. In that case they will settle the issue somehow and nobody will be able to substantially increase the cost of testing due to such a precedent.

[WhiteBlue]

That assumes that Michelin want the contract. To my knowledge, they still don't want in F1 unless they have someone to compete against, and no one wants to compete against them.

We do not know what Michelin have agreed with Todt in 2010. For the public their last stance was competition or we do not want it. But that may have changed with time going by and heads changing in their board meeting.

Interestingly enough, Michelin's twitter posts have been all F1 over the past day. This one in particular was interesting...

“They would need to incorporate sustainability – using fewer tyres. The sizes should also be more like road tyres”.

So it does look like they've found anther strategy that would make F1 work for them. I used to argue that F1 should use threaded tires and not have separate slicks and rain tires, like back in the day.

Your twitter quote seems to indicate that there was a change of philosophy at Michelin as a result of all the tyre talk that Pirelli was able to generate. They have done a super job in that regard which nobody expected from them. So Michelin will have re-evaluated their stance on single tyres supply contracts one assumes.

The concern about sustainability would be the second point that Michelin would typically have. They are dedicated to sustainability and the current waste produced by Pirelli would not sit well with them. That is probably one reason why the FiA would like to see them in F1. Going to profiled tyres could actually do the trick to significantly increase the sustainability. If you reduce the contact patch you can generally run harder compounds with the same durability. Not such a bad idea IMO. It would cost some performance but that could be adjusted by other means.

[Jersey Tom]

The thing about minimizing "waste" in race tires... for as much as I'm not a fan of Pirelli, the waste bit doesn't enter into the equation for me. Tire factories doing consumer / production work crank out hundreds of thousands of units every week. Tens of thousands per day. Many many millions every year. A couple hundred F1 tires every other week for a fraction of the year? Not even remotely a blip on the radar. A company making a push for reduced tire waste in F1.. to me is insincere, as it's claiming to make an environmental difference but does nothing at all.

The road car relevance bit, as I've said many times, I don't subscribe to at all. It would be one thing for Michelin or some other supplier to say, "We have 17 and 18" build equipment for other race series, we'd like to use that for F1 rather than have to procure 13" race tire machines." But to have the tires be similar or relevant to road car ones? Ridiculous. Hell the whole premise of a high downforce open-wheeled car isn't very road relevant either. Worth considering also is that 17+ inch bead diameter tires are a pretty small market share in the grand scheme of things. Quite a bit of 15", and even quite a bit of 13 and 14" still in many parts of the world...

[Pup]

I don't think that actual relevancy is as much an issue as marketing or research relevancy. They want the fans to recognize a link between their racing and road tires, even if none exists; and I'd think that there's a valid argument that if they could come up with a tire spec that wasn't too far off from reality that the research and development work they do would be of use to their business.

My guess is that they'd be happy with something closer to what they provide in other series. Personally, I wish that the FIA would come up with a tire spec that could be used across multiple series, including F1.

[WhiteBlue]

Good ideas, Pup. For me tyres are nothing that interests me. They have to do the job and whoever makes them can have some marketing gimmicks to get a return for the investment out of it. F1 must not be directly relevant to work as a brand enhancer if you do your job right. Red Bull is demonstrating this thesis successfully for some years. They have copied the Ferrari approach to use their F1 expenditure as a marketing tool. Their product has no relevance to F1 and automotive and they still manage to generate that positive effect. So if Michelin values are sustainability and competitiveness I'm sure they will find a way to communicate that through F1 as Pirelli found a way to demonstrate the capability to do high performance and bring tyre strategies back to F1.

Personally I would prefer to see Pirelli replaced by Michelin but that is not going to have any impact on the decision. The fans will have no say in this. I'm afraid it will be another internal struggle between Todt and Ecclestone with the teams mainly sitting on the fence suspiciously watching out that none of them gets the smallest advantage.

If Michelin gets the job I would like to see bigger rims introduced and a total shake up of the suspension game. It is always nice to see many active fields of development in F1 instead of the stale development environment we see for the last five years. 2015 could be the big suspension and wheel year when they make a break to engine development to contain the cost in that sector.

[autogyro]

I believe it will be difficult to find a tyre supplier for 2014 at the rate tyre deg is going.

[strad]

If you open the picture and zoom in on the tire you can see there is an R written on the tire. And also a direction arrow pointing the "wrong" way.

Ah....Thanks

[GTSpeedster]

Again, how does anyone have even the courage to try and defend this indefensible behavior from Pirelli and Mercedes escapes me completely. It doesn't matter how many times you repeat a sophistry in the end of the day it will still be sophistry. I guess we all agree that the International Tribunal tends to be too political at times, but there is no doubt that from the strictly legal point of view there's not a chance in hell that Mercedes/Pirelli will get away clean from this. Dura lex sed lex!

The issue at hand is that first there is a patently clear regulation prohibiting the current year and last year's cars to be tested and this regulation was unquestionably broken without even the knowledge of all of the other teams, and second is that it doesn't matter if Mercedes did or did not got any advantage (because that is now IMPOSSIBLE to know for sure) but that there was an obvious potential to do so and that is what really matters the most.

Pirelli is suddenly now saying that all of the teams will be allowed to test the new compounds during the practice sessions in Montreal, but even if they do this does not erase or nullify AT ALL the advantage that could have already been gained by Mercedes and that as far as anyone know may well have even already affected the result of a Grand Prix.

Additionally, why haven't Pirelli opted for this course of action way before the eruption of scandal and the secret test itself and actually offered all of the teams the chance to test in a practice session at Barcelona? And no, a notification by a mere e-mail sent over one year ago, for what there was not positive reply, don't count as notification for this particular situation as none of the other teams could have any idea that they were planning on running this year's cars like they did. This e-mail is ridiculous for it to be even mentioned as an excuse and just goes to show how they were caught in the act.

This mess that both Pirelli and Mercedes created cannot be fixed or repaired if not by fair and heavy punishment and no amount of fanboyism or other impairment can change that.

[Cam]

Bringing test tyres to Friday sessions for all teams was the obvious and correct method to resolving any tyre issue. Asking why that wasn't done first, is the same as asking why some are vehemently defending the secret test. You won't get a rational answer as emotion and poor decision making, cannot be rationalized with.