New tyres feel “two steps harder” – Palmer

2017 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by

Pirelli have met the goal of producing tyres which give very little degradation, according to Jolyon Palmer.

The Renault driver said the new tyres give consistent grip but are tricky to warm up, which led to his spin at turn three this morning.

“The degradation’s very low,” said Palmer. “Obviously the tyre’s completely different.”

F1 testing day three in pictures
“Pirelli wanted to have a very insensitive tyre to thermal degradation and they’ve done it because you can keep pushing and the tyre keeps hanging on.”

“I’m pushing hard and even going quicker sometimes through the run as the fuel comes off,” he added. “But I’ve only run the medium and soft.”

He said Pirelli have “achieved what they wanted to” so far with the new compounds.

“I was just trying to not let them cool down too much,” he said. “It is completely different.”

“It feels like they’ve gone two steps harder on compound because the warm-up’s really difficult and then there’s no deg.”

Palmer will run tomorrow in the planned test for wet weather tyres. As the weather is forecast to remain dry the track will be drenched before testing begins.

The wet weather running will be “very important”, Palmer believes. “I think it’s not going to be an easy day for them because it’s going to be really cold in the morning and I’m not sure we’re going to have conditions like that in the year when it’s ten degrees track temperature.”

“So it’s a different way the tyres are going to work compared to Brazil where it was a bit warmer. And how they’re going to keep the track consistent when this weather is very sunny.”

“But it’s a chance for them to learn, get some data and get some feedback. Brazil was very bad for them, we hope that it’ll be better this year.”

2017 F1 season

Browse all 2017 F1 season articles

Author information

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...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

6 comments on “New tyres feel “two steps harder” – Palmer”

  1. Sounds like a normal race tyre then, feel like a good news.

    1. Well… the whole idea since Pirelli came in was to have tyres that ask for pit-stops, meaning it would degrade fast enough through the race to make multi-stop strategies quicker than 1-stops.
      Its not like I followed the developments too closely, but here’s how I see the outcome:
      After a little bit of experimentation when nobody understood much and tyres would have cliffs nobody really could predict, they produced tyres that asked for a pit-stop 5 seconds after you went through a corner too fast.
      Then everyone got tired of 20 crazy good drivers cruising around for 2 hours waiting for a guy with a thermometer to say something.
      Now they produced a tyre that has almost no deg at all and we’re back to 1-stops.
      So, after much deliberation, the goal of having tyres that would go slower if you go half the distance on them appears to be just as far as it was years ago.
      I’m not jumping the “Pirellie is rubbish!” bandwagon, maybe the job is just too hard and expensive, but the way I see it – so far they fail.

      1. If you have degredation built in on purpose teams will always find a delta time below maximum to stretch stints and save pit stops. You either have the impossible task of doing what Pirelli have been asked to do or the tyres we will have this year which sound much like the vaunted Michellin WEC tyres which hold performance for ages until the tread has gone and you have to pit.

  2. This is the one area of the technical regulation I hope has the real ability to have the impact of more exciting racing. Surely while it will be harder to follow, not having to care so much about overdriving the tyres will allow the more aggressive drivers to push harder for longer in a fight.

    A lot of the reason despite the aero that we rarely saw good racing was that drivers only got a few laps of a window in which to really push their tyres before they had to back off the attack to salvage their durability. Sure track position will still be king, but at least the opportunity will be there for the racier drivers to really fight for it and apply the pressure.

    One can hope anyway.

    1. Fudge Kobayashi (@)
      2nd March 2017, 3:39

      +1

  3. Hopefully we are entering an era where the drivers must push hard just to keep the heat in the tyres.

Comments are closed.