Pirelli says it is on target to deliver the more durable and raceable tyres Formula 1 has requested to accompany next year’s new cars.
F1 has asked for tyres that allow drivers to push hard throughout races as part of a plan to promote closer racing in 2022.
Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola said the Italian manufacturer “should be very close to the targets”.
He said drivers who had tested the 2022 tyres were “happy” with the result.
On the tyres Pirelli has supplied since it entered F1 in 2011, drivers have generally not been able to push hard for more than a very small number of laps without the tyres overheating and irretrievably losing performance.
This requirement to manage the tyres and prevent them from going beyond a narrow temperature range has been identified as one of the leading issues in preventing cars from racing closely – and for long periods.
A leading driver who spoke to BBC Sport about Pirelli’s new tyres, on condition of anonymity, said those he had tested as part of the 2022 development programme were a significant step forward.
“The new tyres are definitely better; you can push harder for longer,” he said.
What is required of Pirelli for 2022?
Pirelli was given a series of targets by F1 for new tyres that will be fitted next year to cars designed to a revolutionary set of new technical regulations aimed at closing up the grid, and making cars more able to race closely together.
In addition to making lower profile tyres that fit 18-inch wheels rather than the 13-inch wheels that have been used in F1 for decades, the new tyres were required to have three main improvements over the current rubber:
- reduced overheating so drivers can push hard throughout a race stint
- A wider working temperature range, to reduce problems in both getting tyres to the right temperature and then reducing the ease with which they overheat
- Reduced thermal degradation
Why Pirelli believes it is on the right track
Isola, speaking in an exclusive interview with BBC Sport, said he was “quite positive” about the results of extensive testing this year with a number of teams and most of the top drivers.
He said: “During the tests for the 18-inch tyres, [the drivers] were happy with the result. Lewis [Hamilton], for example, is not a driver who loves to test and he decided to test for one day and he gave us his feedback and it was quite positive.”
F1 managing director Ross Brawn said: “One of the things Pirelli have been trying to do is to make the tyres less thermally sensitive, so if a driver pushes a tyre [too hard], it comes back.
“That’s a little difficult with the tyres we have now, and they seem to be making progress in that respect.
“The drivers are starting to enjoy the characteristics of the new tyres. But until we fix the final spec and we see them working with the new car we can’t properly assess.”
Other ways the tyres will be different
Isola said that the lower-profile tyres were providing more satisfying car behaviour for the drivers in way beyond the statutory requirements on Pirelli.
“What the drivers like is that the tyres are a lot more reactive, a lot more precise, because with a smaller sidewall you have a different feeling,” he said.
And he said that the new tyres had been constructed in a way that should allow Pirelli to run them at lower pressures.
At the moment, higher pressures than teams and drivers would like are required to guarantee the structural integrity of the tyres after a series of failures.
“Part of our continued improvement is to design tyres more and more robust without using the pressure as the only tool to react to that,” Isola said.
“If the simulations are confirmed when we run the tyres, I am expecting to run at a lower pressure with the 18-inch tyres.”
How certain can Pirelli be?
Isola said that a definitive judgement on the new tyres would not be possible until the designs run on the new 2022 cars at the start of next year.
He added that one of the key aims of the new tyre design – to allow drivers to follow other cars closely without the tyre irreparably overheating – was impossible to replicate during testing.
And he said that changing expectations of the performance of the new cars was adding further complications.
“We tested on ‘mule’ cars so we have to finally validate the results on the 2022 cars, which will be different,” Isola said.
“There is a lot of discussion about the real performance of the 2022 cars, because at the beginning everybody was expecting cars that were three seconds slower than the current ones.
“Now, there is discussion about a possible performance very close to the current cars and this affects the [rubber] compounds.
“We design a range of compounds centred on the performance we are expecting for the following year.
“In any case, the compounds are completely new because we decided to change the philosophy to meet the targets. So we had a completely different approach with different ingredients.
“If there is a [requirement] to adjust the compounds for the following year, we have the 25 days of testing for 2022 and we are also free to select the compounds in a different way (from race to race).
“I am very confident we can find a good balance.”
