Saturday, June 22, 2013

Tire go-around

Personally I don't think it appropriate to change the tire compounds in mid season.  Some of the teams have come to grips with it; some of them have not. This is the nature of Formula One in all of its rules. Nor example, Ferrari has adapted to this rule set much better than McLaren has.  But that is no reason to change the rules.

These are the tires that Pirelli has produced.  I personally think the teams should be stuck with them for the season.

Pirelli really is in a difficult position with the tires.  If they are too robust and fast, nobody notices them. But since they were asked to produce tires that degrade, now everyone just complains about them even though at is what they were asked for.

I also think it unreasonable to blame the Monaco parade on the Pirelli tires.  Monaco is always a procession to a certain extent.  And the wild number of tire stops required elsewhere shows that things really can be up in the air.

I hope things can stabilize somewhat before next year.  All this complaining about tires is somewhat unseemly.  And I doubt that anyone really wants to go back to the bad old days of the tire wars.