How well did Pirelli do their job in 2011?

[Lurk]

FIA and Pirelli publically said that new tyres will last less lap because they don't want a soft tyre which can run 305km like Bridgestone's did.

[DaveW]

FIA and Pirelli publically said that new tyres will last less lap because they don't want a soft tyre which can run 305km like Bridgestone's did.

I can't imagine that Pirelli (or any other manufacturer) can control the "life" of a tyre by design. I do recall vaguely (I'm too lazy to look up references) that Pirelli predicted at one race that its "soft" tyre would last for 10 laps; Vettal subsequently ran competitively for virtually the whole race on one set, only stopping because he had to.

The other thing to observe is that (in Pirelli's case) restricted life results in "marbles", I believe. The really clever trick would be to deliver one without the other.

[Lurk]

Concerning Vettel, Monaco is the only race which come into my mind... And we all see how carefully he drove and how slow he was before the red flag. He can did that only because it was Monaco.

I agree with the marbles issue.

[DRCorsa]

Pirelli constructed a set of tyres according to FIA's requirements.
Pirelli would have been able to construct a super grippy tyre lasting more laps. But that wasn't what they had been asked to provide.

I'm calling BS on this. Extreme, piled, steaming BS.

BS is Bridgestone?

[ubrben]

Pirelli constructed a set of tyres according to FIA's requirements.
Pirelli would have been able to construct a super grippy tyre lasting more laps. But that wasn't what they had been asked to provide.

Rubbish - that's their level. Let's not confuse engineering with PR.

Ben

[ESPImperium]

Pirelli have did a good job, a pretty good job of what they were asked to do with 6 months lead time into the sport. They came in with a good set of compounds and constructions but there is more that needs to be done, like getting the average set of primes to have total wear out at the 100km mark and get a more consistant 0.8 of a second gap between the compounds.

With the Pirellis there has been some sporting regulations that need tweaked however, mostly this is to do with the Q3 rules and such. Also the Red Flag rules also need an adjustment as well. But this is the FIAs side of things.

If i was to give them a mark, id be giving Pirelli a 9 out of 10 for excitement, a 7 out of 10 for the job they have done and a average 5 out of 10 for the sporting side of things, but overall a 7.7 out of 10 id recon will be the mark they get for 2011.

Im sure that in 2012 they will have a much better time of things and be able to build on what they have done this year.

[ringo]

I'd give them a 5. I don't think the tyre should limit the performance of the car.
The tyres weren't purposely designed to be so silly in terms of utilizing the grip.
It just happened that their tyres came out this way, it wasn't intended.
What i will guess though, is that the tyres will be more like the bridgestons next year, the 2009 bridgestones.

[ESPImperium]

Over the first 5 laps they will give performance simmilar to the Bridgestones, but they should wear out by lap 18 given a normalised 5.5km track. From lap 6 to 18 the tires should wear out at a linier rate. That should give the drivers a 3 stop race.

Martin Whitmarsh has said he wants Pirelli to produce tires that wear out much quicker than that. I think that he is right, and tires should be the diserning factor where the top teams have to stop maybes 4 times and loose a normalised 25 seconds in the pits and the mid feild guys can think about a 3 or even 2 stopper.

Id like the tire compounds as close as the Bridgestones where they are arround .4 to .5 of a second between each other, so that there was even more stratagy in place for the teams to play with.

I never liked the Bridgestones 1 stopper thing. However the grip they gave i did like. They wanted to give a tire that lasted ages and gave the same level of grip at the start to the end of the stint.

Make the engineers and designers think about how to go futher on peaky tires is what i want.

[Pierce89]

Pirelli constructed a set of tyres according to FIA's requirements.
Pirelli would have been able to construct a super grippy tyre lasting more laps. But that wasn't what they had been asked to provide.

Rubbish - that's their level. Let's not confuse engineering with PR.

Ben

The Fia basically asked Pirelli to replicate Montreal 2010 at every race. That required the tires Pirelli produced.

[DRCorsa]

Pirelli constructed a set of tyres according to FIA's requirements.
Pirelli would have been able to construct a super grippy tyre lasting more laps. But that wasn't what they had been asked to provide.

Rubbish - that's their level. Let's not confuse engineering with PR.

Ben

The Fia basically asked Pirelli to replicate Montreal 2010 at every race. That required the tires Pirelli produced.

Correct.

[DRCorsa]

Pirelli constructed a set of tyres according to FIA's requirements.
Pirelli would have been able to construct a super grippy tyre lasting more laps. But that wasn't what they had been asked to provide.

Rubbish - that's their level. Let's not confuse engineering with PR.

Ben

Pirelli's level is rubbish along with their 139 years of experience and history.
OK, i am not here to disagree with you, if only you provide some handy facts proving that Pirelli is unable to simulate and control the wear rate of their tyres.
I don't know if this is an anti-italian "extension" of the traditional anti-Ferrari theme, but let's not ignore some facts.

From Racecar Engineering magazine, February 2011:

"Our modelling is really very advanced. We have been developing it over the last 10 years, and now we are able to simulate a lot of tyre characterstics, the contact patch, the friction coefficient, the cornering forces, high-speed rigidity, rolling resistance and all of the items connected with fatigue in any part of the structure. We did a huge amount of this before building up a prototype tyre. It is very similar to what happens with simulation on a grand prix car where they model every charaqcteristic." Maurizio Bioiocchi, Pirelli's R&D director

"We were also asked that it perhaps not be as durable as the 2010 tyre after a car did nearly a full race distance without changing. I am guessing we will have a number of races where two changes will be required, as the wear rate has been engineered to be higher than 2010. The engineers are different though. They would like one set of tyres, then concentrate on the car, but the team principals think differently. It is a different design input. We could make them last the whole season, but we also want entertaining races!" Paul Hembery, Pirelli's motorsport director

[Jersey Tom]

You talk about stating facts, and then bring up magazine quotes. The two are not equivalent. I've particularly been disappointed in RCE, some of the things in their articles are totally bogus.

Even outside of pro motorsport, I think most can appreciate the fact that in any industry or company... the things that people at the "director" level put out in public aren't exactly the full story.

Can they "simulate" all these things? I'm sure they can. Doesn't mean the simulations are all that accurate, or to the level of precision that people assume it to be. That's the whole game of PR; it's not about what you say - it's about how people will interpret what you say. If you want a layman's analogy of these sim tools though - the meteorologists on the news do simulations of the weather 7-10 days from now, and present their predictions. We all know from practical experience that there's a pretty big error band on those predictions even a day or two out, much less 7-10.

And that's what this thread, my and other comments are about - our practical experience. Not some silly anti-Italian sentiment. Some of the people floating around this forum - former and current engineers at tire companies for example, or auto/motorsport professionals - have a pretty good feel for what's realistic and what's BS.

[DRCorsa]

The quotes i inserted are not the magazine's opinions but quotes from Pirelli's top men.
I agree with you Tom. No simulation is going to bring absolute precision and accuracy. But that's why testing is so important. You make your simulations, build a prototype part, test it and then you correlate the practical data to those provided by simulations. Can you claim that modern F1 teams are wasting their time by running CFD or super expensive wind tunnels?

Anyway, we agree at some point. Pirelli can simulate and can control the wear rate of their tyres. This is a long distance from the opinion by some people here that "Pirelli's level is rubbish, their tyres came out as they are just by luck as they cannot control the wear rate of their tyres".

Mr. Maurizio Bioiocchi told that Pirelli currently has some really advanced simulation tools. Do we want to study something about that and learn something at the end of the day? If yes, that's good. If not, we are free to tell that simulations by Pirelli is just BS.

BS is the opinion that something does not exist or is impossible just because we cannot understand it. When we start studuying what is behind Pirelli's words, then this is the time that we start learing something. And this is not BS, hopefully.

[Jersey Tom]

The quotes i inserted are not the magazine's opinions but quotes from Pirelli's top men.

Makes no difference. In fact, this is exactly my point. That they are quotes from Pirelli's director level folks is exactly why I know better than to just take it at face value. This should be no surprise to anyone who has worked in any business.

[hardingfv32]

And that's what this thread, my and other comments are about - our practical experience. Not some silly anti-Italian sentiment. Some of the people floating around this forum - former and current engineers at tire companies for example, or auto/motorsport professionals - have a pretty good feel for what's realistic and what's BS.

Is there any chance your practical experience is dated? Thinks are moving pretty fast in the simulation field and most of it is proprietary. Then there is the issue of correlation with actual test data, again proprietary. It would seem you would have to be involved with a major simulation project to know how good simulations are at this time. What are the chances of someone with that current knowledge saying something about it on this forum?

Brian