Formula 1 tyre supplier Pirelli believes that its hopes to provide better racing will be helped by the sport’s decision to scrap its proposed ban on tyre blankets from 2025.
Pirelli, which has been F1’s sole tyre supplier since 2011, has been considering changes to its tyres in the hopes of tackling issues of increased thermal degradation as seen this year.
In 2023, drivers struggled to push their tyres to the limit as concerns of overheating limited raceability and the chances of overtakes.
In November, it was confirmed that the F1 Commission had agreed to scrap a proposed ban on tyre blankets which was set to be introduced in 2025.
It was instead agreed that future tyre development “should be focused on reducing issues of overheating and improving the raceability of the tyres”.
The decision eases pressure on Pirelli which can now direct its focus towards addressing overheating issues without creating a new tyre with extra warm-up characteristics as would be required without tyre blankets.
“At least now the target is clear, and clearer compared to previous weeks,” said Pirelli’s Chief F1 Engineer Simone Berra.
“We know that we need to work in 2024 with development tests to produce a new generation of compounds. And this will be the target.
“We will continue to improve the reliability of the tyres in terms of structure, but the compounds will be the focus for our 2024 development plan, and we will work obviously more focusing towards the overheating.”
Over the next few weeks, Pirelli will analyse data collected throughout the 2023 season to better understand the source of the concerns.
“We want to try to understand why, from 2022 to 2023, the overheating effect was higher. What was the reason?” Berra continued.
“After this analysis, which we will do at the end of the season, we will try to understand where to work on the compounds to improve this aspect.
“Obviously, we would like to have drivers able to push as much as possible and not to be managing the tyre temperatures. This is the target from our side.”
Berra denied that the influx in overheating complaints was due to the construction of the tyre, instead suggesting the tyre compound itself was more likely to blame.
“I don’t think it’s a construction issue. I think that sometimes we have overheating comments, but it’s not real overheating,” he explained.
“The drivers just feel a lack of grip or a decaying grip, but sometimes it’s just the tyre that is degrading itself because of wear or graining or for other reasons.
“It happened in the past that we had overheating comments but it was not really overheating.
“But we have some races where we noticed that we had high temperatures, and especially the rear axle was affected by these high temperatures. So, we need to distinguish which is the real reason.
“I think we need to work more on the compound for what concerns the overheating. Obviously, we can work even with the structure, because if we have a more reliable tyre and if we can decrease a little bit the pressure, this will obviously help even the overheating effect, as this will increase the contact patch and so you distribute more uniformly the temperature.
“But for sure a compound itself doesn’t change everything. So the compound should work together with the structure and that’s why we need to progress together: structure and compound.”
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