Alonso says Ferrari have improved tyre warm-up with F2012

F1 Fanatic round-up

Posted on

| Written by

Fernando Alonso, Ferrari, Jerez, 2012

In the round-up: Fernando Alonso says the new Ferrari is able to warm its tyres up more quickly than its predecessor.

Links

Alonso sees early signs of Ferrari tyre warm-up breakthrough (James Allen)

“I think we’ve managed to get more out of the tyres right from the first lap, which is something we weren’t able to do last year. What definitely needs improving is the aerodynamics and the reliability.”

Lotus ‘will bring best out of Raikkonen’ (Autosport)

Eric Boullier: “We tried to handle his personality and make sure that we don’t bother him too much with too many intrusions, and he’s a real racer. This team is full of proper racing people and he has fitted very well because we speak the same language.”

Alan Permane: “Everyone is straight back to working hard in preparation for the next test” (Lotus)

“The first as we’ve mentioned before is the reliability of the car, which has been very impressive so far. Although we had a few niggling issues there was nothing that stopped us running for a significant length of time. The second is the way the car responds to set-up changes. The E20 is clearly a nice package.”

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

GeeMac hopes HRT are on the verge of a breakthrough:

I’ve got a real soft spot for HRT. It has been years since we have had a team that seems to be desperate to hang on to its place on the grid, to hang on to its right to compete. In the current F1 world where major motor manufacturers come and go on the whim of their boards, it is truly refreshing.

They do seem to finally be going about things the right way. They’ve finally managed to get everyone under one roof and they’ve managed to bag a solid driver in Pedro de la Rosa. His experience in top level F1 car development will no doubt help push the team forward. I know their new car didn’t fail the crash tests by much, but I really wish they had. I liked the string of positive stories that were coming out of the team and it seemed like everyone was starting to get off their backs at last.
GeeMac

From the forum

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Michael Schumacher had his first run in the Ferrari F2002 ten years ago today. Thanks largely to that car, he finished every race on the podium in 2002.

Image © Pirelli

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.

66 comments on “Alonso says Ferrari have improved tyre warm-up with F2012”

  1. It’s all well and good that Ferrari can now warm up their tyres faster (and the cold conditions in Spain were a good test for that), but the question is if they can still look after the tyres for long periods as well, or if they’ve just shifted the whole ‘cycle’ forward a few laps.

    1. Yes, thats whats bugging me aswell. They have never runed this suspension configuration before, still since 07 that Ferrari has cclaimed to be too soft on the tyres, hopefully they can mantain it, it was a nice characteristic but I think Ferrari prefers to have less issues with tyre warm up than the contrary, Paul Hembery also said that basically that only Mclaren and Red Bull were able to heat the tyres properly anyways since the abu dhabi GP we know that Red Bull had a clever system to warm-up the tyres instead of being related only on geometry so…. yep I dont know.

    2. @UKFan @ed24f1 While I have no firsthand experience on these Pirellis; I was talking about them the other day with several tyre engineer friends; and it appears that what the Pirellis do is degrade proportionally to how well you heat them. If you can heat them more; you’ll degrade them quicker. And vice versa.

      1. Should’nt heating the tyres make them less prone to degradation as they would become less brittle so to speak?

        1. @mahavirshah I get what you’re saying – but f1 tyres don’t get anywhere near cold enough to “harden” and become brittle. Heating the tyres will cause more degradation in the actual rubber.

          1. I assume that the rubber becomes softer, meaning it wears quicker.

          2. @matt90 to be honest we don’t know if that happens to the Pirellis. Wear… maybe. Depends. Wear is different from degradation. Wear is closer to graining

          3. @matt90 fundamentally; heating a tyre in itself doesn’t really “wear” a tyre. Wear is kind of like the eraser on your pencil – basically the more you use it, the less rubber there actually is on it. “degradation” is more the compound breaking down.

      2. What you’re saying is that Ferraris capability of protecting the tyres was only because of the incapability of warming them up? So logically you would rather have the capability of using the tyres to the fullest, giving the driver the responsability of protecting the tyres. Renault said something in my view pretty stupid, you may have read it aswell, renault said that their 2012 units were capable of giving an advantage to users due to their better fuel economy, possibly trying to say that Renault is able to balance the ratio between power and economy enabling to run less fuel from the start which isnt a surprise still other teams seem to be able to start better at least from the line, they also said that they were behind in power, correct me if im wrong but if other power units are more powerfull they should be able to have a wider range of control of their engine economy because mostly economy is related to the power output.

        1. @UKFanatic an engine with more power does NOT automatically mean worse fuel consumption. It’s how efficiently the engine can convert that fuel into power that counts in that area.

          Ferrari’s inability to heat the tyres was one of many things that helped them in protecting the tyres.

          The start really has very little to do with the fuel weight the cars are carrying – that would be more down to the clutches; the gearing; the launch mapping and the car’s traction. Basically they would start the race with less fuel than the Mercedes/Ferrari engines, and that would, in turn, mean that they could lap quicker in the opening laps. There is a crossover though. A liter of F1 fuel weighs about 711 grams.

          If we assume that Mercedes engines need 250 for a race distance, and the Renault needs 18 less (that was the quoted figure); while producing 15 (assumed) bhp less than the Merc, (which is assumed to have 765bhp over the Renault’s 750), over a 60 lap race,

          a Renault engine runner, should, in terms of fuel weight vs engine power, have an advantage, as they have a power to weight ratio of 0.9595 (including the car’s 640KG). The Mercs would have 0.9567bhp/kg.

          By lap 11, the Mercs would start having an advantage – as they would have 0.9896bhp/kg over the Renault’s 0.9894bhp/kg. By the last lap, the Merc would have 1.1903bhp/kg over the Renault’s 1.1675.

          Basically the advantage would be on the Renault side for the first 10 laps, then Merc afterwards. Note that this isn’t taking into account the various other things that SHOULD come into the equation as well.

          1. I know all about the starts and Red bulls tactic of starting with less fuel and then managed the advantage, anyways that piece of math is quite interesting though, still as you highlighted the equation is far more complex because of all factors, all different setting, conditions and so on, despite all that I bet that both Ferrari and Mclaren knew what were their perfect ratios and they also knew that they had more flexibility in terms of fuel efficiency because despite not being automatically yes taking in account what these teams do with lubricants an efficiency, horsepower is the biggest factor for fuel efficiency and both Mercedes and Ferrari should have been capable of saving fuel at least almost aswell as Renault but they could never surpass the other engines in terms of power and thats and advantage for both Ferrari and Mercedes finally i just wanted to say that these comments by Renault arent that smart despite trying to emphasize how smart their strategy was, and I just see that as marketing.

    3. Lets hope they dont repeat the overheating issues Merc had last year.

  2. I really hope Ferrari haven’t gone too radical with this F2012. I would very much like to see Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari, and two or three more if possible, all close on top.

    1. Agreed. I don’t want to think they’ve gone radical for the sake of being radical

    2. That would be great. Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Renault should all have race winning machines so we could enjoy the hyped-up circumstance of having 5 WDC to the most.

      Both Alonso and Hamilton deserve another shot with a competitive car.

    3. @joAo-pedro-cq I don’t think they have gone too radical to be honest, if the signs are there that the tyres are heating up as desired then that’s one of their biggest 2011 problems out of the way.

    4. What do you mean by too radical? They had to do something radical to catch red Bull. There is no point sticking to something thats just not working.

      The question is has it paid off. But there is no doubt that starting with blank slate was the right thing to do.

      1. Agreed, vjanik…they had to do something…and ‘radical’ is a term being used by an armchair observer…perhaps Ferrari would use the term ‘necessary’ to compete against the likes of Adrian Newey.

  3. I think it’s brilliant that HRT get slagged off for being basically crap, yet they’ve never actually finished last in the season standings in the two years they have competed.

    1. 2010: They got more 14th place finishes than Virgin but only got them in races when all Virgins had retired.

      2011: Fairly beat Virgin in Canada for 13th place, and would have had 14th or 15th for Karthikeyan if he hadn’t cut the corner.

      So they did improve from 2010 to 2011. I think HRT are underrated.

      1. Considering their cars over 2 seasons are almost identical and rarely updated, it should be said Virgin went backward rather than HRT improved. Funny. Even in 2010 performance difference between Virgin and HRT was consisntent while Virgin updated their car many times.

        1. Flying Lobster 27
          14th February 2012, 15:45

          And I thought Virgin’s cars looked very similar from one year to the next too. As a joke, I reckoned it was due to the CFD design: feed a computer similar rules, it’ll draw a similar car. I don’t think anyone in F1 will be calling on Nick Wirth again though.

          1. CFD doesn’t design the car. CFD is just the evaluation tool. The human designers still have to do the grunt work. The design is just fed into CAD which does all of the calculative work.

  4. @Geemac

    I know their new car didn’t fail the crash tests by much, but I really wish they had.

    but I thought you liked HRT? :D

    1. I typed it up at work! Should say “I really hoped they has PASSED THEM.”

      Doh!

  5. What definitely needs improving is the aerodynamics and the reliability

    oh, is that all?

    1. Gibo is driving (@)
      14th February 2012, 5:53

      Yea, my thoughts exactly. It does sound as if the “package” is not exactly right

    2. “And the power. And the grip.

      But it’s a nice colour!”

  6. Woohoo! COTD on Valentines Day…the internet loves me! ;-)

    1. We all love you @geemac!

    2. @geemac Nice COTD! Agree 100% with you. Toyota and BMW can leave with a moments notice and have far from a shoe-string budget. I have a lot of respect for HRT and what they’re doing.

  7. Totally agree with the COTD. I really like HRT, they’ve got that ‘plucky backmarker’ image that the likes of Minardi had and they really feel like ‘an F1 team’ as opposed to ‘a car manufacturer masquerading as an F1 team’.

  8. Another day another Raikonnen story by Autosport.

  9. I’d rather have an arrow to the knee than read another in-between interview.

    1. @Proesterchen What’s an “in-between interview”?

      1. Ah, the downfalls of self-editing.

        I was initially saying I’d rather see more days of pre-season testing, but felt that wasn’t quite snarky enough. Of course, in editing the first part, I robbed the second of any context or meaning. My bad.

        1. Ah OK! I thought it was some new journalistic term I hadn’t learned…

    2. Chuck Norris took an arrow to the knee, then became an adventurer

  10. Did de la Rosa find his pipe yet?

    1. @ajokay You’re not getting two COTDs out of the same gag!

        1. Awww No valentines day love…

          =(

    2. @ajokay
      The new regulations demand that the pipe exits in a certain angle and so de la Rosa’s pipe is currently under review by the FIA for breaking the spirit of the rules.

      1. Ok, now that was genius. :)

        1. Lol…isn’t it more important that the pipe enter in a certain angle? Especially on Valentine’s Day?

  11. that ferrari realy is ugly

    1. Now this is something no one has mentioned before…

  12. Best F1 Racing Simulator – Live For Speed

  13. Alonso sees early signs of Ferrari tyre warm-up breakthrough – so it’s nothing to do with Pirelli making this years tyres softer Fernando?

    1. Oddly the Paul Hembery interview link I included was removed from the previous post.

  14. Here is a good article about the differences in Pushrod vs Pullrod suspensions. Is this why Ferrari went old school to heat up the front tires??

    http://www.vivaf1.com/blog/?p=10173

  15. Another thing about HRT, on top of @GeeMac ‘s COTD, HRT are the only one of the 2010 debut teams that have retained the same name. That’s not a dig at Caterham or Marussia, but it is an example of how seriously they’re taking things.

    1. Is that true though? Didn’t HRT “change” their official name from “Hispania Racing Team” to “HRT F1 Team”?

      They did also technically start life as Campos Meta 1… ;)

    2. Or how they’ve failed to sell the team to anyone.

      1. @topdowntoedown Probably not, but that’s no bad thing, especially if you’ve beaten your nearest competitor two.seasons running.

  16. Saw this earlier elsewhere:

    “Roses are red
    Violets are blue
    To Felipe from Nando
    I’m faster than you.”

    Happy Valentine’s, F1 lovers. :)

  17. This will help Ferrari massively in quali but in the race I would rather have these warm up problem as it can extend the life of the tyres.

  18. Infected Crayons
    14th February 2012, 15:07

    Meanwhile, in Bahrain

  19. Infected Crayons
    14th February 2012, 15:11

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17025148

    Link did not appear in the last post

  20. i hope they give red bull a good run for their money

Comments are closed.