The Formula One Season 2005

Michael,

The only fair solution IMHO would be to force the tyre manufacturers to supply a maximum of 50% of the grid. Only then can you have the reduction in testing that the Michelin teams claim is in the interests of the sport

 

Berniegate?

 

Berniedämmerung?

 

I'm really interested in the test results today. Couthard for Red Bull should be interesting, and I'm curious if Heidfeld can repeat his excellent performance of last week. The German press has Williams giving the seat to either him or Pizzonia, and keeping the other as test driver.

 

Did I just write that? God, I'm a nerd.

 

IMO the best solution would be to have a single tyre supplier and get rid of the silly tyre war. Tyres can have an impact (positive or negative) that totally overshadows the rest of the package (car, engine, driver) so IMO they can really distort the picture.

A single (hard) control tyre would also solve the problem of ever increasing cornering speeds without gimmicks like grooves.

Michael.

 

I agree that a single tyre supplier can reduce costs and limit speeds but how you go about picking a supplier fairly?

Another alternative could be to forbid tyre changes during the race, even if it's wet, forcing manufacturers to make hard all weaher tyres.

 

Well, a if you chose either of the existing suppliers I suppose it's not fair to the teams not using the chosen tyre at the moment but if they add in the "hard" or "all weather" requirement then they'd have to design a new tyre anyway cancelling any advantage.

OTOH they could just contract a different company alltogether.

On a different note, my employer is a major sponsor of the Sauber F1 team so yesterday we had a presentation by Torbjörn Larsson the head of Computational Fluid Dynamics at Sauber about the aerodynamics of an F1 car and how they use the wind tunnel and CFD simulations to design new bits for the car. It was fascinating. They have a supercomputer with 530 AMD Opteron processors to do these simulations

After the PR people from my company and from AMD had done their puff pieces I wasn't expecting much but this was no PR presentation from Larsson - some of it was pretty technical (and therfore all the more interesting).

One of Ferrari's strengths is the amount of work they've done on computer simulations. IMO it's going to be the thing that separates the men from the boys in F1 in the future. With Sauber's switch to Michelin, their new full size windtunnel and the new CFD simulation supercomputer I think they might surprise a few people next year

Michael.

 

Hi Michael,

"One of Ferrari's strengths is the amount of work they've done on computer simulations. IMO it's going to be the thing that separates the men from the boys in F1 in the future."

I also think simulations are very important, but I would say that.

However, Ferrari's real strength is that they optimise everything, whenever they can, in their favour.

This is why they have dominated for so long now.

As to a single tyre supplier to cut testing and save money. This is a bit of a red herring. If we are given 100 million to spend we will, if we are given 10 million to spend we will. The sport / business is self limiting because as soon as sponsors feel they are not getting a return on investment they will stop spending. Then teams that are managed very well will have an advantage in survival and in delivering performance on the track!

Ian

 

Ian,

the current proposals agreed by the nine are IMO grossly unfair to the Ferrari/Bridgestone alliance, and what's more, I suspect the nine know it

Is there anything in the laws to prevent a team being setup outside of F1 to test a tyre manufacturer's developments ad infinitum? Seems to be a loophole there - one which Fiat could possibly exploit given their budget.

 

Hi Merlin,

"the current proposals agreed by the nine are IMO grossly unfair to the Ferrari/Bridgestone alliance, and what's more, I suspect the nine know it"

As I said before Ferrari optimise everything in their favour and don't like anybody who dares to challenge this in any way.

Judging how to make a fair deal is of course very difficult. All BS testing is for Ferrari benefit. Whereas all cumulative Mi testing by all the teams is not for the benefit of individual teams nor necessarily to help Mi develop the ultimate tyre. In fact teams often want tyres to have different characteristics to other teams. Renault is a classic example of this.


"Is there anything in the laws to prevent a team being setup outside of F1 to test a tyre manufacturer's developments ad infinitum? Seems to be a loophole there - one which Fiat could possibly exploit given their budget."

There is a gentlemans agreement between the tyre manufacturers to not do that. In the same way as Fiat could do it so could Honda, BMW and most importantly Toyota if the tyre manufacturers wanted to spend their money in other ways.

Ian

 

Ian,

I take your points but it does seem unreasonable to expect Bridgestone to accept conditions that limit them to just 10% of the testing mileage available to thier competition.

Yes the Ferrari/Bridgestone does have the advantage of bespoke tyre formulations but to try to negate that under the pretence of cost cutting and safety stinks of F1's less agreeable side IMO.

Why don't Mclaren or Toyota seek a similar long term advantage with Goodyear or Dunlop instead of trying a coup?

 

There's every evidence that Michelin tyres are significantly superior to Bridgestone ones already. Pierre Dupasquier of Michelin (who obviously is biased) recently suggested (in an interview on AtlasF1.com) that Ferrari would be as much as 0.5s a lap faster on Michelins . Sauber's performance in testing since they switched to Michelins would seem to bear that out.

Just shows how good the Ferrari package really is.

Another thing PD said is that IHO specific tyre testing is not necessary. He also said that tyres optimized for a particular car is bullshit, a good tyre is a good tyre on any car. He was suggesting that Ferrari are making the best possible use of mediocre tyres and that the Michelin teams (with the possible exception of BAR) are making poor use of an excellent tyre .

Michael.

 

From the pov of the operator of a bad car optimising tyres for it would improve performance but the potential peak would be below that of a car optimised for the best tyres. So why should Michelin waste their time making tyres for a car that by definition won't be as fast?

Or something.

Paul

 

I'm not quite sure I follow your post Paul. However, I think PD is saying they (Michelin) make the best tyres and unfortunately none of their teams has been able to maximise the potential of it. He's saying that the Ferrari would use a Michelin tyre better than any of the existing Michelin teams.

He was trying to destroy the myth (and I believe it is a myth) that the close Ferrari/Bridgestone partnership has somehow enabled them to make a tyre that will work well for Ferrari and no one else and that Michelin should be doing the same by concentrating on making a tyre that's specialised for one of McLaren/Williams/BAR/Renault. His opinion is that a tyre that's excellent for McLaren will also be excellent for Renault (and also excellent for Ferrari).

Michael.

 

The guys not shy about coming forward is he!

basically the team we didn't supply kicked the ass out of the teams we did supply using our competitors inferior product and is was made worse by you lot (supplied teams)under performing.

Hmm how to win friends etc..

 

Michael,

I don't buy it sorry. Bridgestone are a client of mine. They design tyres purely to perform on a Ferrari, not on a BAR or Sauber. Michelin have to spread the effort. If my company was getting comprehensively mullered by the opposition every second sunday, I'd probably spout the same BS as Pierre

 

"He also said that tyres optimized for a particular car is bullshit"

I have a lot of respect for Pierre as knows an enormous amount about racing tyres. In this case he is talking about the ideal case. If we were all able to design the ideal car then we would in theory want the same tyre. Currently Renault often run on a very different tyre to other teams and have a very different approach to set-up.

In the early days when BS came into F1 (and McLaren moved to BS) most teams using their tyres were unable to get them to work becuase they didn't have the capability to make a car fast enough, to require enough energy to be dissipated, to make the tyres work.

Ferrari are in a similar position. The tyres are optimised for their use alone. We could get them to work but if we had been significantly slower then we wouldn't have been able to.

Ian

 

That's the current received wisdom amongst F1 fans and afficionados allthough perhaps not among people in the pitlane. I personally believe PD is right and that view above is wrong.

Not wishing to take anything away from their significant improvement in other areas, BAR's quantum leap in peformance after switching to Michelins is one bit of evidence to support that. Sauber's similar jump in performance (current testing) with essentially the same car after switching to Michelins is another.

The reason Ferrari is fast on Bridgestones is because it's a very fast car. I believe it would be even faster on Michelins.

Michael.

 

What I was trying to say is that Michelin could make worse tyres and some of their customers would go faster. But never as fast as if they fully exploited the original tyres.

OTOH Ferrari probably have a much better understanding of the Bridgestone tyre than the Michelin teams have of the Michelin, and this makes it much more likely that they will make the best use of the tyre.

Paul