Originally Posted by Si_Crewe:
“Not too sure about that.
In fact, Pirelli specifically promised the teams that the prime tyre for Canada would last the ENTIRE race distance with no sudden drop-off and instead there'd be a steady reduction in available grip throughout the life of the tyre.
From lap 50 we had Hamilton on fresh tyres catching Alonso on old tyres at a rate of a little over 1s per lap.
Vettel stopped on lap 63 and caught Alonso at a rate of around 5s per lap and went on to finish 7s ahead.
This seems to suggest that, contrary to Pirelli's expectations, the performance of the tyres degraded from a 1s per lap deficit to around a 5 second deficit within the last 10 laps.
Not quite the "progressive reduction in grip" that Pirelli were hoping for.”
“Not too sure about that.
In fact, Pirelli specifically promised the teams that the prime tyre for Canada would last the ENTIRE race distance with no sudden drop-off and instead there'd be a steady reduction in available grip throughout the life of the tyre.
From lap 50 we had Hamilton on fresh tyres catching Alonso on old tyres at a rate of a little over 1s per lap.
Vettel stopped on lap 63 and caught Alonso at a rate of around 5s per lap and went on to finish 7s ahead.
This seems to suggest that, contrary to Pirelli's expectations, the performance of the tyres degraded from a 1s per lap deficit to around a 5 second deficit within the last 10 laps.
Not quite the "progressive reduction in grip" that Pirelli were hoping for.”
And yet the two drivers behind LH were on older tyres than Alonso and didn't have the drop off. Either the Ferrari was harder on it's tyres, Alonso didn't look after them enough or running close behind LH for a numbr of laps had a big effect. Either way it shows that the tyres, under certain circumstances, did last well.
It does concern me though that drivers have to back off from running close behind someone just because it degrades the tyres so much. I'd like to think that in that scenario a driver will do his best to get past and be the one at the front rather than back off the pace but I guess that the realisty is if they can't get a DRS pass in a couple of laps they are forced to.



