I have really tried to refrain from posting, but I can't hold back further.
First of all, everyone needs to take a deep breath and not judge one another over here for every line/word. More importantly, we need to first stop judging drivers for every damn word they say.
Here is my 2 cents.
1) Was Vettel exceeding track limits?
In my opinion, yes, but he was doing that every lap of the week and it's the job of the stewards to pull him up. They didn't even warn him so if a driver is using every inch of the track, he's smart. It's what anyone else would/should do.
2) Was Ferrari taking a gamble with such a long stint?
In my opinion, yes, but Pirelli said the tyres would/could/should do 40 laps, race conditions not accounted for. Ferrari made the right call in terms of strategy and it didn't work out. Happens. No one should be blamed.
3) So, why is Vettel creating this big hoopla about Pirelli? Is he right in doing so?
In my opinion, YES. Let's once try to understand what he is saying- Yes, he's disappointed to lose out on a deserved podium but the root cause of his anger is the fact that had the tyre let go 300m earlier, he could have lost his life. Has Pirelli ever come out and said, "Ok, there was a quality issue. We screwed up." NO. They seem to have a strong defense mechanism and every time it seems to be a cut, debris, driver off track, "race conditions" etc. etc. etc.
I don't think I'm trying to say that we won't see punctures again or tyres fail again. It HAPPENS. But, there needs to be a WARNING. If, someone's tyre is going to go off because they've been out too long without a drop in performance as an indication that the tyre is losing it, then it's a very dangerous situation. I don't see any reason for Ferrari to have boxed Vettel. He was fine on lap time and while he was being harried and hounded by Grosjean he was managing the situation perfectly.
We've now lost Bianchi and Wilson in the space of days. In my opinion, it's not about podiums, points, championships or tyres. This is a safety situation and I completely understand why Vettel was so furious about it. He even bought it up on Friday with CW. So, all this talk of exceeding track limits and wear is absolute codswallop. Pirelli need to get their act together, PERIOD.
"Sebastian there's very, you're a member of a very select few.. Stewart, Lauda, Piquet, Senna, Prost, Schumacher, Fangio.. VETTEL!"
The bulge in the sidewall shows clearly the sidewall has a flaw or has been damaged (the latter not very likely given it's location imo) and is about to fail which imo shows the Pirelli claim of a wear related failure to be total BS - imo this vindicates Ferrari.
I understand Pirelli. Now, I'm not going to excuse how they are dealing with the situation, what they should say, what they shouldn't, or how they should tackle the press after such an event. That IMO is more a topic of politics.
I'm much rather going to focus on the view point of a tire manufacturer who was brought into the sport with a specific goal:
To create tires that put a limit on how many laps can be done.
Over the course of the past 4 seasons, this has proven to be a difficult task. It's supposedly much more difficult, than to simply create a "hard" tire that will withstand all the forces and be nigh on indestructible. No, these tires they were asked to create are the opposite of that. They need to push the boundaries in the OPPOSITE direction, being on the verge of fragile, while still remaining safe for obvious reasons. Why does the sport need this?
Because the sport has chosen to move away from refueling. If we simply stay with tires that remain more or less consistent over the duration of an entire race, without the likes of refueling, we have the problem that the car qualifying on pole (potentially the quickest car), will simply drive off into the distance. The race as a result will simply be a progression, a logical conclusion where the order of qualifying will also dictate the order of the finish. The quickest cars start in front and simply drive on. At least during the refueling era, teams had the ability to choose their stint lengths which gave a strategic element, and more importantly, brought a faster car into traffic which increased the likelihood of overtakes.
Without refueling, and without the necessity to come in for new tires, we simply have a progressive race where overtakes will not happen unless a car is out of position.
Simply forcing teams to do two stops wouldn't enable this by itself, or not as effectively, as teams would then focus their pits on a time when they would not be in traffic (they already do this, or as good as possible). So to give more variety, tires with differing compounds were needed. Tires that go to the extreme with wear and offer characteristics of falling off the cliff. The most memorable battles for position of the last 4 seasons have not been passes in the DRS zones, but passes where two similar paced cars are at it in different paths of the track. We rarely have two cars fighting for position if the speed differential is too small, because dirty-air will make it difficult for the car behind to close the gap sufficiently. What has helped with this, is that sometimes, you will find that two cars at it, are on differing tires - or tires at different states of their life-span, enabling one car to be quicker than the other, despite similar fuel and therefore weight levels. This has created great overtakes (even if slightly gimmicky).
The problem with producing tires like this, is that when you are on the far end of the extreme, you need to account for many different factors. You have tire pressures, you have the loads, the temperatures, the surface, the climate to consider. And then you have 10 different cars on track, with differing characteristics, different downforce levels and double that number of different drivers with different driving styles.
Pirelli got it wrong numerous times since they have entered the sport and were asked to create these tires. On tracks where tire degradation has been high, they've created races that are considered by a lot of people to be a spectacle. Many of the races in 2012 were considered that, even when we arguably had lottery tires, tires so fragile and at the limit that to many they were considered a gimmick, an artificial way to produce erratic results. Or examples of less extreme tires in 2013, but still producing exciting races until they posed a security concern. Then we have had other races, like Russia 2014, where Pirelli got it slightly wrong, underestimated the surface and brought too conservative tires and the race resulted in a snooze fest.
When they get it right, they are applauded by many, when they get it wrong, they are back in the focus of the media and its critical fans.
Spa 2015 was an unfortunate circumstance. They may have predicted a 40 lap threshold for the tires, but its impossible to account for everything. Yes, safety measures mean that they need to account for some tolerance, but this tolerance can't be endlessly high in a sport where hunting down the last 10nth of performance determines winning from losing. And we've been watching this sport under the Pirelli tires long enough to also know how dependent tire wear is on temperature, which is also dependent on the car and the driver in question. We've seen an identical tire perform differently precisely because of these influences.
What is disturbing is that the tire didn't show much of a drop-off in performance before it let go. This might be due to Vettel driving to a delta (in order to even be able to go for that 1 stop). It is well possible that had he driven to a faster delta, the "drop-off" that we know might have been more pronounced, more extreme. I suspect, that the further away you are from the maximum you can extract from the tire, the smaller the actual noticeable drop-off in performance is when the tires reach the "cliff".
The other factor is the track itself: Spa is considered to be a power-circuit. On a power circuit, I also suspect tire wear to be a little bit less crucial. Even on a tire with low grip levels will you still be able to accelerate to your top-speed. Where you will notice lower grip is in the braking and in corner grip, although that again is dependent on the corner itself too. Perhaps Spa is unique in how the forces influence the tire. What would interest me if I was Pirelli, is how Vettels Sector 2 times held up over the duration of those ~28 laps he did. Was the drop-off there, but only visible in Sector 2 times? Or were they still consistent across the entirety of the lap?
We also know that the load seemed to be highest in the stretch at Eau Rouge, especially where we know Vettel went "off" the track. Maybe on that particular lap, the load simply exceeded what it was capable of as a result of the wear and his "off-track" moment with that tire?
I'm not here to make excuses, but we must also understand that Pirelli's job to create tires at this end of the extreme is an incredible challenge in itself. I see more criticism directed at Pirelli when they get it wrong and are too conservative with the choice of their tires and create a "snooze-fest", vs when they get it right and produce exciting, unpredictable races. They are essentially in a lose/lose position. Sure, safety is key here, I'm not not denying that, but people advocating Bridgestone tires or simply harder tires where drivers can push more, are also advocating races that have been labeled as boring by the majority of forum posters. We can't have it both ways.
In order to move on, one must understand why it was possible for the tire to remain consistent over the 28 laps and still let go and if there is something that can be done to avoid that, without going to the other end of the extreme again by going all conservative on the tires. Motorsport is always going to a risk - a compromise between safety and ultimate performance/speed/lap-times. It's not Pirellis fault, but the sport as a whole must critically ask what kind of a sport it wants to be, and perhaps what its viewership wants.
Not for nothing, Rosberg's Championship is the only thing that lends credibility to Hamilton's recent success. Otherwise, he'd just be the guy who's had the best car. — bhall II #Team44 supporter
See my post above, the pic clearly shows a fault developing in the sidewall- (look for the small bulge) my guess is this is a manufacturing fault internal to the tire sidewall.
I didn't remember a tyre failing so many times like i'm seeing this pirelli tyres, every time a pirelli blows up the excuses are always the same, debris (that no one can see on full hd cameras!), bad management of pressures and cambers and now it's because exceeding track limits and going up kerbs??
Please, every auto racing discipline need to go up the kerbs, that isn't an excuse, pirelli simply needs to up their game or get out of the way, even michelin managed the situation better after indianapolis mess.
Phil wrote:Because the sport has chosen to move away from refueling. If we simply stay with tires that remain more or less consistent over the duration of an entire race, without the likes of refueling, we have the problem that the car qualifying on pole (potentially the quickest car), will simply drive off into the distance. The race as a result will simply be a progression, a logical conclusion where the order of qualifying will also dictate the order of the finish.
IMHO that approach is exactly what FIA did, and exactly what I hate.
For example FE use all the same tyres, tyres that must last not only the whole race, but the whole weekend. Even so there was exciting races, even when tracks usually are very narrow and obviously all of them Monaco style.
Soft tyres that degrade, as DRS, are gimmicks trying to solve the problem, while ignoring the problem, and that´s difficult . Problem is aero, hopefully 2017 rules will solve this, but meanwhile they´ve been for more than a decade introducing gimmicks to minimize aero problem.
Yes we´ve seen good battles due to the different tyres, but to my eyes they have never been as exciting as those when you know both drivers have same weapons. If you know the battle is due to different tyres it´s not the same, at least to me.
Anycase I agree Pirelli´s position is very delicate, as the target they´ve been asked to comply is exactly the same wich makes them look like poor manufacturers. They´re more a victim than the problem... at least partly, I´m not sure how difficult it is to make a tyre wich degrade but does not explode.
What I don't really get though is why it should be that much difficult to produce a tyre that does not last that long yet still is safe. If you look at michelin or bridgstone tyres, they did rarely blow up, the inner carcass was always intact, only the rubber itself peeled off / degraded. Now why can't you just make the rubber more vulnerable while keeping a proper stable inner structure? Of course I know, things are way more complicated than you can see from the outside. But i would suspect a tyre manufacturer would be able to provide such a construction. Actually I have not read any real technical argument as to why this task would be so much more complicated than just building a stable tyre without much degradation. As far as I understand, there are different layers already. So make the inner one as stable as in the past while making the outer one as vulnerable as the current ones.
If you ban refuelling and put the cars all on the same tyres it's no wonder there's less variation, you've taken away most of the variables! Creating fragile unpredictable tyres is not the answer. The answer is to allow more tyre manufacturers back in to the sport, and maybe allow more freedom of choice with regards to tyre selection. But for gods sake, make the tyres more durable!
Moose wrote:I'm always puzzled when people say the beeb have a red bull bias. My general feeling is that they have a strong McLaren and/or British driver bias.
They are very strong when it comes to McLaren, and I think their website editor is a huge Alonso fan and sometimes it shows. But there is no extreme bias towards anyone.
"Leave it to Lewis Hamilton to ruin Redbull's day" - Martin Brundle
"Ok Lewis, Its Hammertime!!" - Peter Bonnington
"Fresh tires, 15 laps. What do you think Lewis Hamilton is going to do?" - Martin Brundle
Diesel wrote:If you ban refuelling and put the cars all on the same tyres it's no wonder there's less variation, you've taken away most of the variables!
1- Driver
2- PU (including mgu-k, mgu-h, TC, electronics and ICE)
3- Chasis (including suspensions, etc.)
4- Aero
Do you really need more variables?
There are many series where there´s only one variable (driver), maybe two if you want to include setup dialing, and they usually are the most fun series instead of a procesion like we see in F1 too frequently. Problem is not the number of variables, problem is the pace difference needed to overtake (read, aero). That´s what should be solved, not increasing the number of variables with gimmicks like DRS, crappy tyres, etc.
Diesel wrote:ICreating fragile unpredictable tyres is not the answer. The answer is to allow more tyre manufacturers back in to the sport, and maybe allow more freedom of choice with regards to tyre selection. But for gods sake, make the tyres more durable!
Moose wrote:I'm always puzzled when people say the beeb have a red bull bias. My general feeling is that they have a strong McLaren and/or British driver bias.
I think their website editor is a huge Alonso fan and sometimes it shows
When someone is a huge Alonso fan he´s not biased, he´s a wise man who knows what he´s talking about
Phil wrote:Because the sport has chosen to move away from refueling. If we simply stay with tires that remain more or less consistent over the duration of an entire race, without the likes of refueling, we have the problem that the car qualifying on pole (potentially the quickest car), will simply drive off into the distance. The race as a result will simply be a progression, a logical conclusion where the order of qualifying will also dictate the order of the finish. The quickest cars start in front and simply drive on.
The question of bringing back refueling has been looked at by all the interested parties (FIA, FOCA, GPDA) and dropped. Statisticaly, there was LESS overtaking during the refueling era (http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/ ... refuelling). Therefore, adding this variable with have the opposite effect and make things worse.
Phil wrote:At least during the refueling era, teams had the ability to choose their stint lengths which gave a strategic element, and more importantly, brought a faster car into traffic which increased the likelihood of overtakes.
We have this now when Mercedes pit or lap people. they get back in to traffic but they easily re-take them. I'm not interested in watching easy overtakes, I'm interested in watching equal cars battle it out and battle for position. We've suffered from from years of single team dominance (Mercedes now, and before them Red Bull). That's the problem. Regulations needs to change to stop the potential for one teams utter dominance, and close the pack. Making cars 6 seconds faster per lap in 2017 is redundant if the dominance still remains. We'll have the exact same situation we have now, just faster and potentially be more dangerous (imagine what might have happened to Rosberg or Vettel if they were travelling at even higher speeds when their tires blew out). I don't want to see high-speed crashes that put more lives at risk. I want genuine overtaking and closely fought battles.
. Problem is aero, hopefully 2017 rules will solve this, but meanwhile they´ve been for more than a decade introducing gimmicks to minimize aero problem.
