Pirelli’s relationship with F1 not in good shape
Pirelli has often been criticized since the beginning of the season, and this continued as recently as this weekend in India. In an effort to prevent the bad publicity from continuing next year, the Italian brand wishes to conduct more tests to be properly prepared, but this seems difficult to achieve.
Since the British Grand Prix, where several drivers fell victim to tire delaminations, the relationship between Pirelli and Formula 1 no longer seems very cordial. Drivers, engineers, and even team officials have not hesitated to publicly criticize the Italian manufacturer’s tires.
This will not improve with the last race held in India where the Italian tires were prone to blistering and graining, which forced Pirelli to request the implementation of a maximum number of laps for each compound – a request denied by the FIA. The Italian manufacturer therefore simply recommended that teams do no more than 35 laps on the mediums and no more than 15 on the softs.
If most of the drivers followed these recommendations with two-stop strategies, this was not the case for everyone, starting with Force India and Adrian Sutil, who implemented a one-stop strategy, completing 41 laps on medium tires and 19 on soft tires.
This affront does not seem to have gone down very well, as Paul Hembery explains in Pirelli’s post-race statement: « We are nonetheless disappointed to see that some teams went against our recommendations by using the compounds longer than we advised. »
In recent days, Pirelli has continuously asked the F1 governing bodies for more testing to better prepare the tires that will be used in 2014. With the arrival of the new V6 engine and ERS, the tires will have to cope with greater power – especially at the finish line – and Pirelli wants to be fully prepared for this.
« We would like to have a little common sense, that’s what we would like. We must conduct tests if we can, otherwise we won’t be able to supply tires next year, » said Paul Hembery in India.
But the competition director at Pirelli is nonetheless pessimistic about holding such tests because he knows that the teams will have difficulty completing their cars in time for the first tests scheduled for the end of January in Jerez.
