Why the imola F1 race is acid test for radical tire scheme

Pirelli’s biggest challenge since Formula 1 became the sole tire supplier in 2011 is to cover its brief – to distribute the tires whose performance falls rapidly beyond a given point – with the drivers’ rubber’s desire that they can push through a whole stent. These two requirements may not be mutually exclusive, but it is difficult to find a ‘sweet place’ between them.

None, at least at least all of the drivers want to run in the long procession stages, where no one pushes the fear of rapidly degrading its tires than rivals. When it is difficult to overtake – either because the track layout is militant against it or the performance of the car is very closely matched – the track position becomes strategic mandatory and teams look to reduce the number of pitstops that are to make them.

This year Pirelli has given more what the drivers wanted by adjusting their compounds to be more flexible-and the car performance is running more one-stop with less strategic variation, the impact in combination with convergence. In many tours, the difference between life and the time between hard and medium compounds in lap time has become so short that it has ended everyone’s strategy, saying, expanding a stent to create a tire offset in the race later.

Currently it is mandatory that three dry-weather compounds are, medium and softened-are brought in each round. By this year, they were officially drawn from a pool of five called C1-C5, depending on the requirements of the circuit.

Japanese Grand Prix’s procession nature worried all stakeholders, inspired Pirelli to suggest a solution: ‘skipping’ compounds are therefore a major step in the performance of tires. This may push teams to two-stop strategies or introduce an element of peril in the sprint weekend, forcing them to make a difficult choice and potential sacrifice.

But all of this rests on the performance of the C6 tire – new for this year and, so far, tested but not the race. This will be the first time in the mixture of potential options in Emola, and the data-weekends collected here will not be largely dried-or will inform the decision to carry or not to carry forward their compound-skipping plan.

As Pirelli Motorsport Boss Mario Isola explained during the Miami weekend, the current compounds could not be replaced during the season, so the company had to find another liver to pull the company.

“We need to understand whether there is any other possible approach to tire selection to push them (teams) to make a two-stop strategy,” he said.

Imola is bringing the most soft option of the weather so far for Pirelli-C6 was originally conceived as a super-soft option for street circuits. The Pirelli that wants to escape is the fate dealing with the ‘Hyper-Soft’ compound launched in 2018: Used for the first and only time in Monaco, it failed to distribute the anticipated results, because around the entire grid, many seconds to avoid exceeding their ability to stop in a lap.

Pirelli’s view is that it needs to see how the C6 performs in the position of the race because it is now all tested data which is less representative.

“Hopefully, if it is dry, (purpose) to get the data on C6,” Isola said, “and then try to follow the other race again whether to leave a level (will work on one level) – for example, the delta lap time between C3 and C4 is quite close, perhaps we can consider C2, C4 and C5.

“This means that if you want to go to a-stop C2-C4, the C2 is clearly slow, so you should not have the same benefit as you designate C3, C4 and C5.

“In some other cases we can consider using C3, C5 and C6 or C2, C4 and C5. So Imola is important because we need additional data on C6.”

For Monaco this year, two stops have been made mandatory, but it is unlikely to be adopted across the board as it will probably lead all teams to roughly run the same strategy and stop at the same point. The stakeholders who want to achieve that is a landscape where there is more strategic variation and where optimal options are less pronounced-so there will be a mixture of another two-stop strategies, possibly three.

Getting it is best done by encouragement compared to force.

The attendant risk of having more isolation between compounds is that a really qualified tire is formed and is never used in the position of the breed. Pirelli is working with a commercial rights holder to simulate potential results and reduce this risk.

“We can also do C1, C3 and C5,” said Isola. “I am not sure of the result, but we can do that.

“We (we) will never decide it. We make a proposal to FIA and F1. We share the proposal with the teams and then we come on an agreement with the approval of FIA.

Some simulation of F1 and Pirelli involves finding out whether it will be possible to force teams in difficulty trade during the sprint weekend-maybe sacrifice some performance in the sprint to choose more optimal tires for the race. Can these scenarios be really engineered, given the simulation capabilities of the teams, there is another question.

“This is a never ending story,” said Isola. “We try to create a problem for teams, and they find a solution …”