FORUMula1.com - F1 Forum

[What's Burning?]

The problem for Mercedes is that they're in a no man's land. A little fix won't help them and they're still far enough away from getting enough viability and performance to go the route Ferrari did in Barcelona.

[spankyham]

I very much doubt this, and they'll need to find more that 2-3 laps worth of wear, they hardly managed one lap in Barcelona. I very much doubt they've got something up their sleeves, otherwise they would have deployed it already; no way would they sit there going backwards and not try to create anything, but at the same time if they had something that could substantially help they wouldn't not use it.

The problem for Mercedes is that they're in a no man's land. A little fix won't help them and they're still far enough away from getting enough viability and performance to go the route Ferrari did in Barcelona.

I think you would both be right if you looked in isolation at the worst of Mercs year at Barcelona. There have however been times when Merc has looked ok. Remember the race where Lewis started looking in trouble, then suddenly it all came to him? Also Malaysia. Clearly there are times and conditions when the tires can work on the Merc. They just need to find how to manage getting into that sweet-spot.

I had noticed Merc keeping out of the debate. I wondered if they were just letting Re Bull do the talking for them.

There are plenty of chiefs in Merc who are not shy of speaking their mind and happy to be in the limelight

[spankyham]

I have said this before, but an absolute key to Ferrari understanding these tires and how to get the most out of them is this guy:-


Hirohide Hamashima

[What's Burning?]

Mercedes was reporting today that Nico's race pace was faster than Lewis' by 7/10 simply by going hot one lap and easing off the next. He was able to prolong the life of the tires much more that way.

[Hammer278]

Mercedes was reporting today that Nico's race pace was faster than Lewis' by 7/10 simply by going hot one lap and easing off the next. He was able to prolong the life of the tires much more that way.

What are these tyres made of anyway? Memory foam? Lol and Vettel is perplexed by his own pace being so slow while on the same tyres/car as Webber.

I am almost convinced these stupid tyres differ in characteristics from one set to the next!

[What's Burning?]

I have said this before, but an absolute key to Ferrari understanding these tires and how to get the most out of them is this guy:-


Hirohide Hamashima

If Hamilton ever moves to Ferrari, Hamashima-san will have to be referred to by another nickname.

[racechick]

Mercedes was reporting today that Nico's race pace was faster than Lewis' by 7/10 simply by going hot one lap and easing off the next. He was able to prolong the life of the tires much more that way.

Jesus Christ!! I don't want to watch Lewis easing off

[Hammer278]

Pirelli needs 'rapid decision' on 2014 or could pull out

Pirelli says it is running out of time to receive confirmation that it will continue as Formula One's tyre supplier and warned that there will come a point when it won't be able to get a tyre ready in time for 2014.

Pirelli has been negotiating with the teams since the start of the season, and while Hembery has never made a deadline for a decision public, during pre-season testing he said "I can't see us being here in June or July still talking about whether we are going to be in the sport". However, with no contract in place at the moment and brand new tyres needing to be engineered for the new regulations, Hembery said the situation was extremely serious.

"I've always said that we will never declare an internal deadline, but clearly time really is too late and things are getting, as far as we can see, extremely serious because the changes for next year are so substantial that the sport has to make a rapid decision," he said. "Aside from having the fixed resources in the business involved in Formula One, there is also a technical job we need to do as well. It's not a case of putting a harder compound on to this year's tyres that we'd probably need to do a thorough re-engineering of the tyre. So the longer this goes on, it makes our job impossible and there will come a point where you probably say we don't have time to do the job anymore."

Hembery said a tyre supplier is expected to provide teams with the details of the 2014 tyres by September.

"Apparently on September 1 we are meant to tell the teams all they need to know about the tyres for next season, but we are now in mid May so you can imagine how ludicrous that is when we haven't got contracts in place. Maybe we won't be here anyway."

Hembery said Pirelli is also facing challenges with the limited testing it will have ahead of next year.

"Assuming we have a contract for next year we are going into a year where we have some simulation data on how the engines will be, but the reality might be even more severe," he explained. "Even if we say we are going to be very cautious, we'd still like to be able to test a new solution at some stage during the early part of the season in 2014. We don't want to test on this year's car because it will be pointless, we want to test on an actual car, but we don't want to test on eleven cars, we don't need to test on eleven cars."

____________________________________________

Quick decision?

[vaptin]

Actually, I think we need a selection of tyres every race, that enable the "average" car to choose between 1-2-3 stops, or something like it. So maybe three tyre compounds, with clear differences between them per race.

We also need qualifying only tyres, that every team can change for the race, before the race, and the teams are guaranteed 2-3 sets of fresh tyres in the race. That will sort qualifying out.

Perelli, I think, are good at producing different tyres at least, that offer competitive options, with Bridgestone there was always one obvious tyre, and the pit stops and choosing the alternative tyre compound were just because they were mandatory.

Basically, I sort of want to see, Ferrari v Lotus again, (personally I think Mercedes are keeping quiet, because well, they haven't got a hope that Perelli are going to change tyres in a way that actually gets Mercedes anywhere), one team going for an aggressive strategy, v one team going for a conservative one.

[NHcheese]

And pirelli tyres look better! What's your favourite coour.

[Hammer278]

They look like go kart tyres to me. The Bridgestone/Michelin tyres looked like real F1 tyres....and they're all black in colour anyway. When the car's running you hardly see any colour on the sidewalls.

[NHcheese]

Pirellis look like genral race tyres especially when on a road car!

[racechick]

Shame they don't act like them.

[NHcheese]

SHE IS BEAUTIFUL!

[darwin dali]

I put this quote in here so that we have it on record - the Pirelli bit.

Whitmarsh said Formula One had "badly mismanaged" the introduction of the new V6 turbo engine regulations for 2014.

"What is frightening is that we have adopted important new engine regulations," he said. "They are the right thing to do in many regards. They are technologically interesting and relevant to society. But F1 badly mismanaged the cost of the development and supply of those new power plants. We allowed the engineers to be unfettered in dreaming up the regulations, which means teams are now facing big bills. We got costs down to £10m and now we are talking about double that. That is with all the other cost challenges we have. In addition, under the new agreement, the teams will to pay Pirelli $105m over the seven years."