The trial of the brand new Different Tyre Allocation guidelines at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix has prompted some debate about whether or not the move to improve sustainability is the right direction.
For the Hungaroring weekend, F1 has decreased the variety of dry tyre units out there to drivers from 13 to 11, with groups additionally pressured to make use of the exhausting, medium and mushy compounds within the three qualifying segments.
It’s understood that the discount of tyres wanted for the weekend saves a complete of 17 tonnes of apparatus being shipped to every race.
Whereas the tweaks appeared to boost the battle for pole place on Saturday, there have been criticisms from some drivers about how the dearth of accessible tyres restricted monitor motion in follow on Friday.
Lewis Hamilton was one in all many who reckoned that issues might be improved, and questioned the sustainability push due to what he thought occurred with moist tyres that by no means received used.
“I believe once we’re speaking about sustainability, simply taking one set of tyres or two units of tyres away isn’t sufficient,” he stated. “Every weekend there’s quite a lot of moist tyres that get thrown away, each single weekend.”
Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz added: “There’s quite a lot of moist tyres they throw away on the weekend, and that is what we have to work out. How can we do higher there, somewhat than scale back the leisure for the followers.”
However Pirelli has defined how the drivers’ claims over the moist tyres are unsuitable as a result of unused moist climate tyres at European races are saved in play for following races.
Pirelli moist tyre
Photograph by: Erik Junius
Pirelli’s head of F1 and motorsport Mario Isola advised Autosport: “For the European occasions, we hold the tyres fitted on rims, and we stock over the tyres which might be new. So we provide the groups with the identical units [as previous races].
“For abroad occasions, it’s extra difficult as a result of the edges should journey with the groups, whereas the tyres should go together with us for customs causes.”
Whereas the scenario with the flyaways is totally different, Isola says analysis is happening to attempt to discover methods to reuse the rain tyres in order that they are often introduced again into motion even after being faraway from the edges.
“The thought for the long run is to have the chance to dismount the tyres from the edges, and match them once more, on the following occasion,” he stated.
“One other concept that we’ve mentioned prior to now was for races the place we’ve climate situations that often are sunny, like Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, or Jeddah, to not match all of the tyres.
“So if they do not match the tyres, when we’ve this new process, we will use these tyres for one more occasion. There are various concepts for the long run to scale back the waste of moist and intermediate tyres.”
Isola added that work was additionally happening to guage higher whether or not tyres which might be stripped from rims could be introduced again into motion.
“After we strip the tyres, and we dismount the tyres from the edges, we ship them again to the UK to Didcot and we’ve folks checking all of the tyres to know if there’s any injury to the bead,” he stated.
Mario Isola, Racing Supervisor, Pirelli Motorsport
Photograph by: Alexander Trienitz / Motorsport Images
“Wanting on the evaluation achieved within the first races, we’ve a share [that cannot be used] that may be very, very low.”
The potential for reusing tyres can be elevated with moist climate tyres that aren’t pre-heated, as rubber that has gone by means of a warmth cycle can’t be used once more.
Isola defined: “We are able to do this with the moist tyres as a result of they’re no extra in blankets and we’ll do this for intermediate tyres with the brand new model with out blankets.
“That’s as a result of when you have one tyre broken in a single set of tyres that had some warmth cycle, then it’s important to exchange all of the tyres to have all of the 4 the identical.
“This isn’t very best as a result of when you have, say, 10% of tyres which might be broken however it’s important to exchange 40%, it is unnecessary. With out blankets, you’ll be able to simply exchange one tyre so it saves loads.”