Pirelli’s Head of Car Racing and Formula 1 Mario Isola believes better “communication” will help avoid a repeat of the tyre woes seen during the Qatar Grand Prix weekend.
Following Friday’s practice and qualifying session in Qatar, the FIA announced that Pirelli had discovered cuts in a selection of its tyres.
The cause was attributed to 50mm ‘pyramid kerbs’ in place at the circuit and several safety measures were introduced to combat this, including revised track limits, bringing the circuit perimeter in by 80 centimetres at Turns 12 and 13 via painted ‘kerbs’.
After Saturday’s running, the FIA and Pirelli imposed a maximum stint length of 18 laps – but Isola is adamant that more needs to be done to prevent this from happening in the future.
“We need to improve the communication, to have a system where, when there are changes to the circuit, there is an involvement of different stakeholders in order to understand if there is an impact on any of them,” he told Autosport.
“I’m not just talking about Pirelli and F1, because when you design a circuit, obviously, you plan to run different categories like F1, and MotoGP, for example.
“So why not involve also the motorcycle federation, or Michelin, or maybe a couple of tyre manufacturers, and the people that are designing the track?
“We need to improve the communication in order to anticipate the issues.
“Obviously we had an issue two years ago that was quite similar. And after that, we provided the reports.
“But we learned quite late about these kerbs here, and obviously it was too late to take action.”
To have reported on issues two years prior only to encounter further problems with the kerbing for this year’s event certainly makes Isola’s point on a system of communication relevant.
With safety of paramount importance, more needs to be done to prevent the necessity for mandatory pit stops, and Isola has confirmed Pirelli will take the Qatar tyres back to the Italian manufacturer’s headquarters in Milan for further analysis.
“We prefer to send them back to Italy and to make a proper analysis,” he added.
“What we can do now here [at the track] is something not very accurate, because we don’t have the time, and we have to dismount the fitting area and everything.
“That’s why it’s better to take the right time to run the analysis.”
