FIA and Pirelli to monitor tyre temperatures

2014 F1 season

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Pirelli tested a new type of sensor in Bahrain which will be used to ensure teams do not over-heat their tyres before fitting them to the car.

Stickers attached to the tyres will monitor the maximum surface temperature reached when teams warm their tyres in blankets.

“Pirelli prescribes a maximum temperature of 110C (230F), which should not be exceeded at any point before the tyre takes to the track,” Formula One’s official tyre supplier said in a statement.

“The FIA will ensure that this limit is respected, together with the minimum tyre pressures when leaving the pits and maximum camber levels on the track.”

The FIA will introduce a new rule next year banning the use of tyre warmers.

2014 F1 season


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Image © Pirelli/LAT

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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23 comments on “FIA and Pirelli to monitor tyre temperatures”

  1. Were the teams deliberately over heating the tyres last year before the race? Wonder if that would alter the rubber compound to make them last longer

    1. Doubt it. Overheating a tyre should, in theory make them wear faster and as a result, explode. I might be mistaken but several teams such as Mercedes and Red Bull probably overheated their tyres during qualifying rather than the race.

      1. depends if the heat can cure the tyre as it cools back down, while the tyre isn’t being worked fully

    2. i think thats exactly what is being inferred here. i know in years past teams would put a heat cycle through some tyres in some situations to aid longevity

    3. over heating the tyres while driving would cause very quick wear,
      but over heating the tyres beyond what they would see on track while in a tyre blanket is almost the same as tempering metal.
      allowing the tyre to change is molecular structure, allow the tyre to go to a state of neutral and then likely harden the rubber,

      1. just had a quick search to describe what i ment,

        2/3rds way down suprise suprise ex redbull worker explains how it works!!!!!
        http://www.tyre-technology.com/index.php/heat-cycling

  2. Is there a penalty for using tires that exceed the maximum temperature?

    1. Accelerated wear rates, and a chance of premature failure :P

      1. So basically no then. Pointless to have a rule with no penalty.

  3. Hmmm…last year the tires were so bad that teams were taking extreme measures to swap them, change cambers and pressures etc, to get any improvement they possibly could.

    Now that the tires are supposed to be better, which should mean no need to fool with them in an extreme way, they introduce FIA policing to ensure limits are respected.

    Sounds no different than changing the technical regs massively, which should make for an exciting season of surprises, only to then add the universally hated double points garbage to ensure further that the season goes to the last race, like they have no faith in the new regs doing that.

    This sounds to me like overkill and more about Pirelli not being able to afford one single issue this year with their tires without that causing a massive backlash. They want to make sure they are ‘legally’ covered now, with the FIA policing what teams are doing with the tires, so that Pirelli can put the blame for any issues on the teams. The other side of the coin of course is that if there is an issue and the teams were within the policed limits, then Pirelli is on their own.

    This makes me wonder if in fact the tires will be more of the story this year than we have been led to believe. I sure hope not, considering fuel saving and heat controlling of the power units seem to already be threatening to cause delta time running.

    I’m still not convinced having a single tire maker in F1 is a good thing, and I insist that a tire ‘war’ does not have to mean processions. And if the tires are not the story this year after all, Pirelli may find themselves not being talked about at all and therefore feeling no marketing impact for being in F1…but now that there will policing of them, it’s a way for Pirellis to get a mention in the coverage.

    1. I think this is the FIA finally doing what they should have done with Pirelli last year – making the teams head the “recommandations” for minimal and maximal setting parameters – to avoid any issues like we saw happening in the future when inevitable they do start to look for all the little bits of competitive advantage again.

    2. Hmmm…last year the tires were so bad that teams were taking extreme measures to swap them, change cambers and pressures etc, to get any improvement they possibly could.

      Nice piece of revisionist history there. You do know the teams did this regardless of how good the tyres were? And how the problems last year were in part caused by that misuse?

      1. The teams only started swapping the tyres last year in order to get more life out of them. Force India was the 1st team to do that & it helped them with tyre durability so other teams followed.
        Had the tyres been more durable the teams would not have done that as there would not have been the desperate need to manage the tyres.

        Everything Pirelli pointed to as been an ‘issue’ were things which had been safely done at one time or another in the past on many different tyres with zero problems. Thats why there were no regulations in place to prevent them.
        It was Pirelli’s fault that there tyres were unable to withstand the normal practices because they had no safety window in there design.

        About time people stopped falling for Pirelli’s PR spin.
        What’s there excuse for the dramatic increase in ‘cut’ tyres in 2013?
        I’ve been an F1 fan for just over 35 years & have never in my life seen the amount of cut tyres we saw in 2013 in any racing category. Likewise for the other problems.

        If it was a pure case of teams pushing the boundaries then we would have seen problems in every season with every tyre suppier thats come into F1, Fact is we havn’t because other tyre suppliers know how to build safety margins into there designs to allow things to be pushed beyond there usually conservative recommendations.

        1. Pirelli made the tyres the FIA asked them to make. Yes, Pirelli could have pushed for better durability, but the buck stops at 8 place de la Concorde, Paris.

          1. That’s the FIA HQ, by the way.

          2. Pirelli made the tyres the FIA asked them to make.

            The compounds/construction of the tyres is 100% down to Pirelli, The FIA have zero say in the tyre specifications outside of the tyre dimensions.

            The FIA’s only brief to Pirelli was to try & ensuretyres didn’t last more than 50% of the race to discourage 1-stop races, How Pirelli went about doing that or if they decided to ignore that brief was 100% down to Pirelli.

            In 2011 Pirelli did a good job, In 2012 Pirelli decided to take tyres more extreme & they went even more extreme in 2013 & the problems which resulted are totally down to Pirelli.
            Let us not forget that it was Pirelli who decided to go for the Steel bands which were the root cause of many of the problems, Thats not something they were forced to do it was something them themselfs decided to do.

            In 2011 I felt Pirelli did a decent job, In 2012 they took things a bit more extreme with the small operating windows which caused many problems for teams/drivers & made races a lottery & in 2013 they took things a bit more extreme with thermal degredation which caused even more problems.
            They should have stuck with there 2011 philosophy there was nothing wrong with those tyres, Was no need to change things with low operating windows or thermal degredation doing little more than to act as an artificial means of trying to hinder top teams.

            If there are more tyres problems this year who do they blame then? They got the extra testing they wanted they have been asked by everyone to be more conservative, If there are problems yet again in 2014 it will just show yet again that another tyre supplier should be given the F1 contract.

          3. @davey – Yes the construction/compound was down to Pirelli. They also set usage restrictions the teams ignored, and the FIA failed to enforce. Of course it’s easy to blame Pirelli; they made the damn things. But it took several dramatic failures and threatened boycotts to get the FIA off it’s **** and do something about it.

        2. The teams only started swapping the tyres last year in order to get more life out of them. Force India was the 1st team to do that & it helped them with tyre durability so other teams followed.

          Sorry to upturn your apple cart and there Davey, but teams had been swapping tyres the year before that as well (there’s even pictures of Merc trying it in 2012 early on), only it became something almost everyone was doing last year.

      2. @raceprouk I’ll let davey’s well worded response, which I agree with, stand as a response to your comments. I’ll just add what I said all along, and what I predicted ahead of the decision regarding the Pirelli test with Mercedes last year. They ALL had roles to play. FIA asked them to make the tires, the teams signed off on them the previous autumn, Pirelli took it a little too far compared to the previous seasons but under regulated restricted testing nobody knew until they raced on them at hot venues how aggressive they were. Therefore the judgement at the tribunal shared the blame, but only Mercedes paid a price.

        I suspect there will be no issues regarding tires this year, and if there are I think Pirelli will have to go, or a competitor be brought in to go up against them.

  4. IR cams last year did show cars leaving pits with much hotter tires than they got at any time racing.

  5. I should start a business producing those stickers, I’m sure I would get plenty of orders.

  6. So what happens?
    The FIA will tell the team affected to cool down the tyres before the get put on the cars?
    Can’t the tyres exceed the tyre warmer temperatures while running on the cars?
    Another opportunity to impose a drive through for something the viewers have no idea about.
    The direction Formula1 and the FIA are going, you may get more freedom in North Korea than on the race track.
    Why not just make proper tyres and let the teams cook them how they please instead of all these gourmet tyres

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