Pirelli tyre pressures “a bit of a joke”

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Formula One drivers have again criticised tyre supplier Pirelli for imposing high minimum tyre pressures.

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Mercedes and Hamilton have taken lots of penalties in order to stock up on spare power unit parts. Some have suggested the rule needs to be toughened up, but there are practical problems to using something other than a grid penalty:

The problem with taking away points is that a team like Mercedes who are leading the constructors standings by 159 points are not going to be hurt much if you take points away while teams a bit further back could drop two or three spots down the order if they lose just a few points and that could hit them hard when it comes to prize money distribution which is based on the constructors standings.

It was felt that the grid penalty system was the best was to remove any incentive for the top teams to change components just for the hell of it.
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On this day in F1

Felipe Massa won the Turkish Grand Prix ten years ago today while Fernando Alonso extended his points lead by holding on to second place under fierce pressure from Michael Schumacher.

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38 comments on “Pirelli tyre pressures “a bit of a joke””

  1. Sir Jackie “forgot” why Mercedes left F1 in 55, it seems. They didn’t “quit”, they left because of the accident at Le Mans. There’s a pretty substantial difference between the two.

    1. Yeah, even wise man can say stupid things.

    2. Stewart should retire from offering his opinion.

    3. But maybe it would have been a smart thing to do even without the crash – in terms of bang for advertising buck.

    4. Stewart is real funny… Those were fifties, they left to save grace…

      Now we are in 2010s not 10, 20, years later but more than 60 years later.

      Mercedes came in F1 then to show off, now they come to reap commercial and engineering benefits.

      You cannot reap commercial benefits by saying “We were F1 champions in 2014…” when it is the year 2016. You dont see McLaren try to sell their awesome 1998 title, no they sell “cutting edge F1 tech”.

      You cannot claim to be cutting edge F1 tech if you are not in the race next Sunday.

  2. Felipe should retire. He is well past his best. He was a very good driver before the 2009 accident, but after that he was never the same.

    1. I agree. After the accident he lost that razor sharpness of the great drivers, having really great races esporadically and being just mediocre most of the time. Although I think he could still race in other categories at europe or at least in the brazilian stock car.

    2. his pole in austria 2014 and the start in silverstone 2015 were his last pieces of magic

    3. I disagree, Filipe is mostly as good as ever, but his car is nowhere and other drivers are simply better. Lots of people blame the accident, but that is nolonger an issue. He just isnt that fast, and neither is his car.

  3. A self-driving autonomous racing car? That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. They might as well call it “Formula A.I.”- it’s a battle of how computer programmers program the car’s brain. It’s “Battle Bots” but with racing cars. God, how boring does that sound…

    1. It will be the greatest IT show to broadcast live hacking during the race with Snowden as an anchor. At least until Formula AI decide to enforced radio silent.

    2. It’s not going to be a prime race series – it will support Formula E iirc.

      Having teams program the machines to be the best racers might not be the most exciting spectacle (although I’m interested to see how much difference it truly makes), but the tech and its relevance to road cars is incredibly exciting.

      1. Exactly, what with all the hate with autonomous car? No one ever said non AI racing will be banned. Just follow whatever interesting for you and left other stuff for people who can enjoy them

      2. Not really. It’s pretty easy to make a car drive autonomously on a track where all traffic goes the same way. Add in crossings, stop lights, lanes that split & merge and especially, stupid people doing weird stuff; then it becomes interesting. None of that happens on the track (unless they let Maldonado drive among the autonomous cars).

        1. @aapje, not to mention the complexities of pedestrian and cycle traffic in urban environments, given that in many cities they share the same space. Equally, they are pretty poor at coping with roadworks and cannot cope with manual signalling either (for example, if a policeman is diverting traffic because of an accident or manually operated stop-go signs at roadworks).

          Asides from that, they are still unable to cope with adverse weather conditions (Google’s current generation of autonomous cars cannot cope with wet weather, for example, since the onboard sensors cannot detect the road markings or traffic signs).

          In one sense, starting out at a racetrack is perhaps not a bad point given that you would have a well defined route and the absence of additional complications that would allow for some experimentation to take place under controlled conditions. However, given it is very unrepresentative of real life conditions, like yourself I doubt that there really is much potential for a significant amount of technology to be transferred from the track to the road.

        2. @aapje Driving autonomously is easy, racing them is another matter. Look at racing games AI, they can lap easily but really bad at racing. I think it will be interesting show in itself (Formula AI).

          1. I’m not saying it’s not interesting per se, just not very relevant to autonomous road cars.

    3. In terms of the cars racing among themselves, we’re 90% of the way there already. Think Gutierrez wouldn’t win any races in a Mercedes?

    4. I don’t see people watching a 2 hour GP of it, and it will never replace having men… sorry people having a driving series as well just like the automobile didn’t end horse racing or running.

      I’m fairly sure there is a considerable audience that would find the rapid development and competitiveness of an AI based series fascinating, myself included.

      1. @philipgb That would require broadcasters fielding presenters who don’t shut down an interview as soon as the subject shows a sign of mentioning something technical. [grinds teeth in frustration.] At least with an AI-based series we won’t have to put up with gossip about the drivers’ latest Instagram photo or what funny remark they passed in the press conference.

  4. Of course Mercedes can afford to come second. Stewart will say anything if he thinks it sounds smart. He hasn’t noticed that people actually like Red Bull better since they stopped winning all the time, or that it takes decades to become a revered F1 team like McLaren, Ferrari, Renault & co, with ups and downs. If Merc left now F1 fans would just think it was all cynical and lump them in with Toyota, Sky and CVC.

    1. @lockup I agree. What happened to teams/manufacturers competing for the love of it, while making good livings for themselves? Only one driver can win, one team win the WCC, and yet the others keep coming back and trying. It’s simply what they do.

      As to clear number 1’s and 2’s…I’m not a fan. I find it depressing to think that one guy is there to not compete against the number 1. What’s the point then? Forgo one’s dreams to help another achieve his? Nah. There’s little enough racing as it is. Both drivers should have an equal chance on a team and that is what creates the storyline of F1. The Ferrari one-rooster way, when it has been employed, has not been for me, and the MS/Ferrari way where his teammates were actually contracted to not compete, disgusted me. That said I’m fine with a natural 1 & 2 where a team has a senior and a young up and comer, but I still want them to have an equal chance.

  5. Massa is just trying to justify himself being needed, I think he is not in his prime anymore and should retire, regardless of his experience.

  6. Re. COTD – how about tagging the grid drop penalty to the component itself, and applying it to every GP that it participates in until the grid drops are used up?

    So, assume someone has earned a drop of 25 positions due to changing 5 components (for simplicity, I assume that changing any component gives you a 5-place drop, instead of a 10-place drop for the first component). If that car can only drop 16 places, then the remaining 14 places are associated with 3 components (5, 5 and 4) and the next GP that those components are used, the pending grid drops are again applied.

    If specific components with pending grip drops are not used in subsequent races, then the grid drop doesn’t apply, but is deferred to such a time when the component is used.

    This ensures that a car is penalized as long as it benefits from the use of new components and has pending grid drops. It does require the order of components to be defined so that grid drops may be taken off the components in that order.

    1. What if someone is crashed into by another driver and loses their last PU because of it. Are you really suggesting they should have to suffer a dnf and grid drop penalties for the subsequent races over an incident that was neither theirs or the teams fault? Seems crazy to me

  7. Re: Pirelli. As long as the new tyre spec ruin Mercedes domination, this is a good news.

    1. Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari can adapt to changes in tire spec better than the smaller teams, because they can throw more money and engineers at the problem.

    2. @ruliemaulana Nope. The tire spec should be neutral for all teams. If Mercedes able to exploit them more again, then that’s good for them.

    3. Changing tyre specification mid-season is a complete scandal IMO. Talk about being unprofessional. This has the potential to upset the whole championship. Saying that performance is equal to previous spec is such obvious BS.

      1. @balue So you didn’t read the article then.

        1. I did. Why do you ask?

        2. @robbie I did. Did you?

  8. Massa, “Believe me: a lot of teams will need experienced drivers next season. Drivers who already have the experience of the sort of cars that we will see in 2017 in their career.”

    Really? I doubt that. It’s just a subtle way of advertising your services but I don’t blame him.

  9. It’s time for Jackie to be sent to a. Urging home… What utter crock!

    Interesting he didn’t state who should be the number 1 and 2 at Mercedes and the reasons as to why they withdrew from the sport in 1955.

    But this I do know, had Nico been the one to win the last 2 WDC”s, he would not have made such a stupid suggestion.

    1. *nursing home..

  10. Jackie Stewart really does talk some rubbish sometimes doesn’t he!

  11. Hmm is Stewart saying this perhaps because he is at risk of being usurped as the most successful British F1 driver in WDCs? Merc pulling the plug now would be like closing the doors on a very profitable business that owns the largest market share. That would be astute decision making for business wouldn’t it? Merc are in F1 to win and market their world class engineering. They have two highly marketbale drivers who appeal to different audiences and they are cleaning up championship after championship and getting their investments back with big fat bottom lines. Not very smart comments from Stewart I must say, to find a kinder way of putting it.

  12. WeatherManNX01
    27th August 2016, 17:38

    Drivers during the week: The cars need to be harder to drive. It’ll make things more exciting!

    Drivers at race weekend: Waaaah! My car is too hard to drive!

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