bill shoe wrote:It took too long to replace Bridgestone, but at least they were replaced by someone other than Michelin. I'll apply a quote from Wallace and Grommit: "That went about as well as could be expected".
I think teams are too optimistic that their tire-spec wish list will eliminate suprises next year. It's not clear that Pirelli can quickly make tires that will meet all the specs, and as JersyTom often points out you can know all the tire specs and still have little idea how it will actually work on the car. Also, teams that switched from Michelin to Bridgestone a few years ago found major aero changes from the different tire shoulder profiles. What shoulder profile will Pirelli come up with? Yep, pre-season testing will be interesting.
This is all OK, F1 needs less certainty and predictability.
Id worry about the spec more than the aero configurations, as the rumor, and this is likley to be made a one off after the season is the likley test for 4 days with race drivers with 2 cars per team at Abu Dhabi with the 2010 cars so they can get data. The reason for this is for each team to get data for the new tyre before they finalise everything before they enter the full build stages for their new cars.
Also if the rumored ART takeover of BMW Sauber goes ahead, expect to see Pirelli source the Toyota TF110 for testing with a driver or drivers with recent F1 experience, rumored to be Nick Heidfeld, but id prefer Kazuki Nakajima or the best driver out there avalable that many have pointed out, Anthony Davidson.
If Pirelli can get arround 12,000km to 15,000km testing done with a car that is up to current F1 spec before the end of the season, id say they will be fine, as long as this is done with the teams getting a single force majure test with the 2010 equiptment for data purposes for 2011. Otherwise there is a saftey issue, whiotch the FIA will not want.
Now the announcement has been made, lets hope we can get some sort of resemblance of having its house in order.