Originally Posted by Woodentop:
“The paddock is coming round so it seems. Hembry? at Pirelli said 4 stops is too many and is voiced by most teams. Accepting tyres are too much a factor, they will endeavour to go back to longer compounds.
I've argued that F1 has become a conservation exercise, rather than pure engineering and the ultimate test in performance of man and machine. The first part off the line and to the first use of DRS sets the pattern and then apart from bloody minded or desperation on the part of drivers, the procession, subject to pit stop strategy, begins.”
I don't think the lifespan of the tyres, per-se, is the problem.
The problem is that if you make a tyre fragile enough that it only lasts 15 laps it's
also fragile enough that one big brake lock-up or a couple of laps of challenging
also ruins it.
Ideally, what they need is some kind of compound that is as resilient as the old Bridgestones for 15 laps but then just falls apart within another couple of laps.
And I doubt that's actually possible.
Trouble is, as well, that with all the clever software that they use these days, the teams all know what the best strategy is likely to be.
I worry that even if they make the tyres a
bit more durable, all that's going to happen is that the current situation will continue but there'll be fewer pitstops.
I suspect that the only way you'll really convince drivers to fight on-track is to give they a tyre, like the old Bridgestones, which is guaranteed to last the entire race even if abused.
I've played with a rather old F1 race simulator and (assuming I'm doing it right) the stuff to do with tyre grip is a lot more complex than many people realise.
The trouble is (according to the simulator, at least) that you need to make pretty drastic differences to the level of grip before lap times are noticeably affected and that means making tyres that have huge differences between them.
I wonder if the way forward might be to create tyres that are, basically, extremely durable (like the old Bridgestones) but make them with 3 or 4 different layers of "tread" so that the top layer is super-grippy but wears out within half a dozen laps then the next layer is less grippy but lasts another 10 laps and
another layer that's even less grippy but lasts 20-odd laps?
At least, that way, the driver would know he's always going to have
some level of grip but the decision will be whether it's worth pitting for a new set of tyres that will give him an extra advantage for a short time.
While I'm at it, a quick question about rules...
If Q1 and Q2 are dry but then it's raining for Q3, do the top ten qualifiers get a free choice of tyres for the race (assuming the race is dry) or do they have to start on whatever tyre they set their fastest lap on in Q2?