F1technical.net

Cam, your mistake is the possession of an opinion critical of the "FiA" - otherwise known as the FIA to those who don't automatically kneel before an altar of "power." The "FiA" doesn't make mistakes; it merely presides over them.

That said, I'm afraid I have to - *gulp* - agree with ol' Blue here. When it comes to F1, the FIA is little more than a rubber stamp entity whose only role is to lend a facade of legitimacy to the circus. If it had any real power, the regulations would look a whole lot different. (They'd probably be enforceable, too.)

I blame the teams and Pirelli for the current crop of "tires." The teams like having an easy scapegoat, and Pirelli likely couldn't do much better anyway.

Just_a_fan wrote:

Pierce89 wrote:If the passing is as easy as people claim, why didn't Vettel ever pass Hulkenberg? He was totally stuck behind the Hulk and said on radio he could go .5 quicker if Hulk wasn't in front.

Because the RB is quicker in the twisties but limited on top speed. So on the straights he didn't have the speed overlap to overtake.

I understand the technical "explanation". I just think people are over reacting about the "purity" of a billion dollar a year corporate structure. F1 hasn't been pure in decades. I've quite enjoyed the Pirelli era.

With the new 2014 regs we need good consistent tyres. By the way it's very stupid to spend hundred of millions of $ to build and race a F-1 car and use rotten tyres that simply kill the racing. I really hope Hankook (DTM) will replace Pirelli. I don't trust anymore the italian rubber company.

and Pirelli likely couldn't do much better anyway.

Come on now...Do you really think Pirelli doesn't have compounds upon compounds stored away, and could make any style of tires dictated?
Hell they could make rock hard tires that last three races if that's what was ordered up..or the equivalent of any Michelin or Bridgestone. It's all in what's ordered up. This was a cheap(?) and stupid way to try and appease the masses.
In a way..much like the guy said...careful what ya wish for.....

Making a tire that lasts forever is one thing; making one that lasts forever and offers the requisite performance is another. The 2005 season showed us that even the mighty (Bridgestone) can get it wrong.

you cannot have both..my complaint is with this particular compromise.

Cam wrote:So you've called me dense for a non-literal comment. Smart move.

There is little humour in blaming the wrong people. The FiA is doing an outstanding job under Todt in my opinion and bashing them for amusement is not appropriate in my view.

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/190068/1/t ... mpaign=rss

If there is any doubt who is really responsible for the tyre spec and contract conditions read the above linked story. Like most of the time the decision by the teams in the F1 commission is being held up. It is time that the new structures are put in place with the new concord. Bernie is toying around with that because he does not want to concede the money to the FiA that the federation needs. And the teams cannot agree on a cost control mechanism by budget caps. So it is business as usual.

strad wrote:

and Pirelli likely couldn't do much better anyway.

Come on now...Do you really think Pirelli doesn't have compounds upon compounds stored away, and could make any style of tires dictated?

I wouldn't think that's the case, no. Why would it be? When would these have been developed? They didn't have particularly good tires when they were in F1 in open competition, and the compounding now - for better or worse - let's say isn't optimal from a performance standpoint.

When would these have been developed?

They have a whole recipe book full of compounds...they all do..I didn't mean they have them on the shelf..
They have cats working every day with nothing to do but try out new compounds.

strad wrote:

When would these have been developed?

They have a whole recipe book full of compounds...they all do..I didn't mean they have them on the shelf..
They have cats working every day with nothing to do but try out new compounds.

Ehh.. not really. Or not the way you might be thinking. There are compounders, yes. They may be working on F1 line stuff, they may not. They may be working on tread compounds, they may not (and instead be working on compounds that go on plies or belts or anything else). They may be looking for performance, they may not - may be looking for alternate suppliers or methods for cost down.

It's a business like any other. You have your yearly objectives, and you have to justify the time and money spent on what you're working on. If there's no business justification for developing high performance F1 treads, then they're not going to waste their time on it. Furthermore, they've never shown they've had proven high performance tread compounds squirreled away in "the vault." Never showed they could really stand up to the plate in open comp.

Bottom line it's not like they have a group of guys just hanging out trying random race tire performance enhancements.

I think the tyre situation within f1 is laughable almost.

We have a championship which is labelled as the pinnacle of motorsport, with the worlds fastest track cars.

The cars currently, have 3/4 pitstops in a race to replace tyres which dont last, cars wont go off line for an overtake after the midpoint of the race due to the excessive marbles, and talking about who can save tyres, not who can go fastest, f1 has gone from talking about how driver A vs driver B vs driver C and a thrilling championship, now it is almost random who will win the race and not knowing the real battle of the championship until the last race or so. Taking pole means nothing anymore.

Cast our minds back to 2008/2007, thrilling championship, overtaking, tyres which lasted, 2/3 pitstops, drivers pushing 90% rather than 60% or so, can I ask anyone, why did this change?

just a photo of the tyre failure aswell:

"Cast our minds back to 2008/2007, thrilling championship, overtaking, tyres which lasted, 2/3 pitstops, drivers pushing 90% rather than 60% or so, can I ask anyone, why did this change? "

earlier today i watched bahrain 2007 race on sky sports f1 and it was awesome, massa and hamilton at the front pushing the cars to the limit and not worrying about if they're going to overcook the tyres. even overtaking or defending on almost the whole width of the track and only kicking up dust not marbles lol. the only thing seeming to slow the drivers down was how much fuel they put in the cars at the pitstops.

allstaruk08 wrote:"Cast our minds back to 2008/2007, thrilling championship, overtaking, tyres which lasted, 2/3 pitstops, drivers pushing 90% rather than 60% or so, can I ask anyone, why did this change? "

earlier today i watched bahrain 2007 race on sky sports f1 and it was awesome, massa and hamilton at the front pushing the cars to the limit and not worrying about if they're going to overcook the tyres. even overtaking or defending on almost the whole width of the track and only kicking up dust not marbles lol. the only thing seeming to slow the drivers down was how much fuel they put in the cars at the pitstops.

Yet 2006 saw Alonso follow Schumi for like 75% of the race only to get ahead of him by like half a second by the 2nd pitstop and then we had Schumi following Alonso around for the last 25%, and they were pushing 100%, static isnt fun!

But anyways, todays race with todays tyres was good except the obvious tyres breaking. We had real overtakes all over the place and we had tyre over takes and we had DRS overtakes and we prob had overtakes that were all 3 at the same time. We pretty much had racing 90% of this race.

The opening laps were fantastic. As usual, however, the race soon settled into the war of attrition we call "tire conservation," and that just doesn't do it for me.