2013 F1 Season Preview: Tyres

Since its introduction in 2011, Pirelli have continued on their mandate of “spicing up” Formula 1 and they have achieved the goals set by FIA to quite an extent. The engineers at Pirelli have been able to create an element of surprise in the past two seasons, but as the season has progressed, that element of surprise has diminished and the teams are now able to look after their tyres by using the optimum setup.

So, this year as well, Pirelli are going to bring an all new P Zero tyre, which, according to them, will make team engineers scratch their heads as they try to find the optimum setup. In the last two years, we saw that as the season came to an end, the races got a bit boring as Pirelli have at times been too conservative. Some notable examples are last year’s Indian Grand Prix and American grand Prix.

In the Indian Grand Prix, drivers were able to do the entire race on one-stop strategy, which meant that there was very little on-track action and thus the race proved to be processional and, to an extent, boring.

The rules and regulations for the 2013 season are fairly stable and so the teams will not have to modify their cars drastically. And, because of that, all the teams will be having prior knowledge of how the tyres behave. Nonetheless, Pirelli are expecting some aerodynamic modifications by the teams which, according to Pirelli, will be necessary with their new P Zero Tyres.

Here’s what Pirelli Motorsports director Paul Hembrey had to say:

“We’ve had a good look at what we did last year and what worked – maybe towards the end of the season we were a little bit too conservative and we are hoping we can give a challenge.

“It probably won’t be the same as 2012, because the cars aren’t changing a great deal – the platform the teams are working with is very similar so they will understand their vehicle a lot which means they will be able to get the maximum out of the tyres a lot quicker than what they did in 2012.

Having said that, we will be taking a more aggressive approach, more aggressive compounds and we hope we can create some element of surprise.”

The P zero Red tyre or the supersoft compound was only used four times last year and according to F1 Analysts, Pirelli should have brought P Zero red to India, where the surface is less abrasive. Pirelli themselves have admitted that their tyre choice for Austin wasn’t optimal, as the temperatures were as low as 7 degrees, which meant that teams had trouble getting heat into the harder compound tyres and thus suffered very little degradation.

“At the end of the season last year, we could have used them in the last four races actually – that is the stage it had got to and that is because the teams are very good at their jobs. They have the best engineers in the world, the best drivers and they really found a way of not degrading the tyres, not graining them and we hope we can give them another push in that direction to maybe create two or three pit-stops. Said Hembrey

Talking about Austin, here’s what Paul had to say”:

“Obviously it was a new track and the braking points where unknown and you saw a lot of people late braking and running wide and getting overtaken. If we had gone back a week later we would have seen a very boring race so you have to be careful with making assumptions that it was down to conservative tyres.

“It was a lot to do with the track being an unknown quantity and in practice you don’t try overtaking people so we had situations where people were working out what were the ultimate braking points. We would go with a much more aggressive approach if we went back to Austin again.”

Pirelli 2012 Statistics:

Tyres

• Total number of tyres provided for the season: Race tyres: 31,800 of which 22,500 dry tyres and 9,300 wet tyres plus an additional 6,600 for the tests (not including development tyres)
• Of which (for race tyres only): supersoft: 6 % / soft: 25 % / medium: 21 % / hard: 17 % / intermediate: 18 % / wet: 11 % / 2 % development tyres
• Total numbers of tyres used: Dry tyres: 21,400; wet tyres: 2,100
• Number of tyres recycled during 2012: All, i.e. 31,800 race tyres plus 6,600 test tyres
• Average life span of a dry compound this season: 180 km
• Average life span of a wet compound this season: 140 km

Tracks, Races and Tests

• Longest continuous energy input into a tyre: India (turn 10-11)
• Longest race of the year: Malaysia in 2hrs 44min 51.812s
• Shortest race of the year: Great Britain in 1 hr 25min 11.288s
• Most laps run on Pirelli tyres: Hard – Kobayashi (798); Medium – Senna (869); Soft – Ricciardo (1,012); Supersoft – Raikkonen (237); Intermediate – Alonso (145); Wet – Kobayashi (104)
• Highest top speed reached by a P Zero F1 tyre: 248.241 kph (Hamilton / Italy Qualifying)
• Slowest top speed reached by a P Zero F1 tyre: 161.828 kph (Schumacher / Monaco Qualifying)
• Most fastest laps in 2011: Sebastian Vettel (5 in race / 6 in qualifying)
• Distance covered by Pirelli’s Renault R30 test car in 2012: 7,012 kms
• Number of different test tracks visited by Pirelli staff this year (incl. private tests): 9

Pit stops

• Total number of pit stops for the year: 957 (of which 14 were a Drive Through and 2 a stop&go penalty)
• Total average number of stops per race: 47.9, i.e. 1.9 per driver
• Most pit stops in a race: 76 (Malaysia)
• Least pit stops in a race: 24 (United States)
• Fastest pit stop time: 2.31s (McLaren / Jenson Button at the German Grand Prix)

Overtaking

• Number of overtaking manoeuvres in 2012: 994 (not including Brazil)
• Most overtaking manoeuvres in a dry race: 90 at the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix
• Most overtaking manoeuvres in a wet race: 76 at the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix
• Least overtaking manouevres in a dry race: 12 at the Monaco Grand Prix

Other interesting numbers

• Total kilometres driven by all the P Zero compounds in 2012 (races and tests): Hard – 101,692; Medium – 121,840; Soft – 123,270; Supersoft – 21,993; Intermediate – 13,770; Wet – 7,930
• Coldest track/ground temperatures Pirelli P Zero tyres have run: United States Grand Prix at 11 degrees Celsius (17.11.); coldest overall: Jerez winter testing at 0 degrees Celsius (10.02.)
• Hottest track/ground temperatures Pirelli P Zero tyres have run: Brazilian Grand Prix at 55 degrees Celsius (23.11.)
• Coldest air/ambient temperatures Pirelli P Zero tyres have run: United States Grand Prix at 4 degrees Celsius (17.11); coldest overall: Jerez winter testing at -2 degrees Celsius (10.11.)
• Hottest air/ambient temperatures Pirelli P Zero tyres have run: Grand Prix of Europe at 37 degrees Celsius (21.06.)
• Amount of time spent downloading all tyre data on the RTS system this year (incl. tests): 92 hrs
• Number of track/air temperature taken by tyre fitter per race weekend: 124
• Total distance travelled by all F1 tyres in 2012 (off-track): 216,967 kms
  • Total number of tweets from Pirelli Media: 5,400
  • Words written on Pirelli press releases in 2012: 79,744
    • Total number of Pirelli recipe books produced (incl. translations): 10,000

Pirelli F1 and its people

• Total number of Pirelli people travelling to each race: 52
• Total number of nationalities within the Pirelli F1 team: 10
• Average amount of hours spent by each Pirelli staff member on a plane this year: 192 hrs (or 8 days!)
• Number of Pirelli wristbands given out during the season in the paddock: 4,450
• Total number of hotel nights booked for the Pirelli team: 1,498

Pirelli’s F1 Trucks & Hospitality

• Total amount of trucks at European races: 13
• Total average kilometres travelled by each Pirelli truck in 2012: 31,125 kms
• Numbers of meals served at the Pirelli F1 hospitality (incl. tests): 24,132
• Number of coffees served by Pirelli hospitality during the season: 28,350
• Number of different pasta recipes cooked by Pirelli’s chef this year: 314
• Amount of mascarpone used for tiramisu and other dolci: 205 kgs

Pirelli in Formula One overall (since 1950)

• Races started: 242
• Wins: 83
• Pole positions: 86
• Podium places: 256
• Fastest laps: 90