F1 Fanatic

First of all I’d like to say I think Pirelli have done a stand-up job and fully fulfilled their mandate. More pit-stops will always make a race more exciting than it is and I think they got the degradation rates bang on today.

But the problem is the mandate is flawed: make the tyres wear quicker because we want more Montreal races. It seems to have escaped FOTA’s notice that the reason Montreal was so exciting, apart from Lewis and Fernando being on equal pace and able to fight each other more often because of the extra stops, was because Red Bull started on a different compound which really mixed it up.

The “start on your qualifying tyre” needs to go. Only then will we see more mixes and Montreal-style races. Because for all the pit stops today, if there hadn’t been a blunder by McLaren and/or Hamilton’s issue the pecking order would have been very predictable. In Canada we didn’t know what was going on until Webber was caught in his penultimate stint.

I was surprised some of the bottom end of the top ten – Petrov, Rosberg, Kobayashi – didn’t run on the hards to begin with to safe a set of softs for the end of the race.

The “start on your qualifying tyre” needs to go.

DO YOU HEAR THAT FIA?!?! WELL, DO YOU?!!!!!

Idiots. (not you Icthyes, the FIA).

I was surprised some of the bottom end of the top ten – Petrov, Rosberg, Kobayashi – didn’t run on the hards to begin with to safe a set of softs for the end of the race.

I had been thinking about that as well, but it seems like a defeatist strategy I think in that no matter how small the chance is, they have to use their fastest tyre to make sure they can profit if one of the normally faster teams make a mistake. They’d look really silly if they hadn’t and someone crashed out for example.

Oh, yes. I am really happy with the job Pirelli have done. As Calum says, the only thing they could do better is the distinction between the compounds. I like the idea someone on here offered to have the whole sidewall a distinct colour. It’d be like a reference to the whitewall tyres of old :)

@ Fixy – Good question! I could see them having to inherit their tyres from quali otherwise you would be potentially negating any penalty. Whaf about the guy who gets promoted though? He would rue having to use old tyres these days.

The sport is not about speed Ivan. It’s a product of decades of development.

And if anything Pirelli are doing a terrible job of being green. Gone are the days of burning an engine out over a race weekend and rightfully so.

The Tyre rules definately need to be changed. Definately scrap the start on quali Tyre rule. I’m not too happy about watching Hamilton and Alonso driving around trying to save tyres when they could be driving much quicker and more exciting.

I fully agree the rule needs to go but I don’t think it would change the strategies that much. The soft tyres were over a second quicker this weekend compared to the hards, and when all the cars are closely bunched at the start you don’t want to be losing track position just for the sake of strategy. If the compounds had a narrower performance differential then ok…