Twitmarsh on Tires

"Twitmarsh"? Like his is some sort of unique or unreasonable opinion? Or is yours just a knee-jerk reaction against anything spoken by a McLaren team member?

You must have missed this part of the quoted article:

If you think F1 tires are the cutting edge of technology (or if you think they're supposed to be), you haven't been paying attention. Have you looked at them lately? Cutting edge is NOT tall, high profile sidewalls. Cutting edge is NOT 13" wheels. Cutting edge is NOT deliberate high degradation.

Cutting edge would be 20 series tires on 19" or 20" wheels, with grippier rubber that would last the whole race distance. Pirelli could make those easily. The F1 rules don't allow that sizing, F1 doesn't want durable tires and specifically instructed Pirelli to make tires that degrade rapidly. Cutting edge has nothing to do with it, and Whitmarsh isn't the one who doesn't understand F1.

 

Jack, I am not a McLaren fan, but I have grown to respect Whitmarsh's views. Not sure what he really meant about the tires, and if he was taken out of context.

But the fact remains, the current wheel/tire set-up is rather antiquated. I assume there are reasons for this. When watching the race this past weekend, I noticed how almost "slot carish" the wheels and tires looked.

Whatever Whitmarsh meant, I am all for anything that eliminates the current F1 parade. Including further reducing those rear spoilers.

 

Not at all. Tires are in fact still a black art, with secrets tightly guarded. The size of the wheel and the size of the sidewall do not make them cutting edge. For lightweight formula cars, the current size still makes sense, and the tires are extremely cutting edge.

You actually want the wheels to be as small as possible. They are rotating unsprung mass, deadly to performance. Sports cars have those huge wheels not because they are in ANY WAY better, but because they have to fit bigger brakes under the car due to weight and cooling issues. The performance tradeoff in a sports car favors bigger brakes. Not so for formula cars.

Not only is the construction of tires a black art, "we" actually don't even understand how tires work (at a deep level). That's part of why it's a black art. Unlike, say, engines, which we understand far better, even though a huge part of engine technology is aerodynamics (intake and exhaust flows) -- itself an art more than science.

Not really, not with today's technology and understanding of materials.

Just a comment about "cutting edge" tires, not any opinion on Whitmarsh's statement.

 

Only because you're confusing form with function.

 

Yes, true.

 

Pirelli were given the task of making a tyre that did degrade quickly, somewhat at odds with the Todt green issues stance...

But they did a pretty good job IMO, I do also think the tyres got better as the season progressed, and it is one or two things, either they did start to make them last longer, or the teams managed to get more out of them with car set up ect.

I tend to think a bit of both, but a more durable Pirelli mainly as the season went on.

 

Waaay back in the 1970s, the FIA deliberately fixed the F1 wheel diameter at 13" to limit the size of brakes that could be used. The carbon fiber brakes and extreme ducting solutions developed over the past 20 - 25 years were done as a response to the rules-limited brake size. Meanwhile, the sidewalls of the relatively tall F1 tires are a large part of the "mystery", or black art, of F1 tires. F1 uses a lot of weird solutions to compensate for the inherent springing of the sidewalls, like the inertial dampers and J dampers etc. F1 engineers would love nothing more than to move to a 20 series tire and allow the suspensions to do the springing and damping, rather than the undamped bouncy sidewalls they are forced to work around now. There's nothing leading edge about the tire size specification and the compromises it forces on the rest of the car. I would guarantee that every single F1 team would trade 2 kg per wheel for an 18", 20 aspect ratio tire specification! Even with the same rubber compound, the cars would easily pick up a few seconds per lap (minimum) by eliminating the undamped rubber springs of the tall sidewall tires.

 

I didn't say there was, but what I did mean is that there's nothing NOT leading edge about the tire size. It's irrelevant to being on the cutting edge or not.

There is some inherent damping.

Few seconds? No way.

 

The problem, I think, is not the fast degradation, but the lack of consistency: in some circuits the tyre lasts forever, in others just 6 laps. Sometimes there is a big difference between soft and hard tyre. Sometimes, some cars even work better with the hard tyres than with the softs.

I don´t know if they do this deliberately, but for me as a fan sometimes it´s confusing.

 

Button won a championship in part credited to an ability to judge the grip and life of the rubber, and maintain it for longer. Having rubber with a cliff means there is more control with the driver for when to pace, when to sprint, what sort of pass or type of line to take.

Likewise sprinting with new rubber or going two stops with the same rubber has been part of some fantastic NASCAR and Indycar battles. Even before the change in manufacturer there have been some superb battles in F1 between dry and wet rubber on both a damp track, and one quickly drying.

If they create more battles like the fantastic Hill, Schumacher and even Alonso 'who can go the longest on this set' battles - then my opinion is they are doing the right thing in promoting the one part of the car that is harder to change in the technical rules, the two hands and two feet that belong to the driver.

 

Dunno about "a few seconds per lap", but other than that, +1.

These huge sidewall tires are indeed "springy" - And think about the *incredible* stiffness that's in there! Cornering at ~4G would rip most tires of that aspect ratio right off the rim!

I'm pretty sure that when Bridgestone announced their withdrawal a few of the potential new suppliers said they'd only be interested if they went to 18/20" wheels and much lower profile as that's what's applicable to the real world. Dunno if that kept any of them away, but it seemed that Pirelli were the only guys who stepped up with the current regs.

Cheers,
Ian

 

That's true, but I'll cut Pirelli some slack on this - Gotta remember that they'd *never* run on most tracks until this year. Plus the FIA asked 'em to do something "dramatic" to get away from Bridgestones conservative approach. Plus they have to be aware of the 2005 Indy disaster......

I think they've had a fine rookie season and learnt a *lot*. Hembery is on record as saying they want the gap between compounds reduced from ~1.5 seconds to about 0.8 next season.

Further, the early season howls about them falling off a cliff seems to have subsided - I suspect as the teams learnt about them. Add in that some guys have made 'em last for half the race after claiming they only last for a few laps and "you can't please all the people all the time". [Or, Ferrari *any* of the time! ]

Cheers,
Ian