RE: Pirelli's Silverstone fightback

[crabbit]

Mini1275 said:

From Sniff Petrol:

Sniff Petrol said:

That Pirelli statement in full

A series of different causes led to the tyre failures at Silverstone:

- We didn’t know the cars would be driving that fast.

- Uneven wear caused by too much turning right.

- The teams repeatedly put new wheels onto the cars too quickly.

- Excessive braking, accelerating and swerving about.

- Extremely sharp leaves on track.

- Failure to proceed to approved Pirelli stockist upon kerbing tyres

- We were asked to make st tyres. Stop fking complaining when the tyres are indeed st.


A FOLLOW UP STATEMENT FROM PAUL HEMBURY

Oh God, I’m so sorry. Forget all that, forget I spoke. It’s not you, it’s me.

Am I alone in thinking that Richard Porter should spend less time writing pish for the Top Gear production team and concentrating more on the genius that is Sniff Petrol?

[tertius]

sad61t said:

It's not a matter of outside-is-outside, it's a matter of left-is-left. When the left-hand rear is known to take higher loads at a circuit, Pirelli design the sidewall of a tyre intended to be fitted to the left side of the car to take higher loads than a right-hand tyre.

That amounts to the tyres being unique to each circuit - surely not? I suppose it would explain why the teams have found it difficult to get to grips with the tyres, but I find it very hard to believe.

If it is the case it would be nice for Pirelli to say so a bit more clearly.

[Agent Orange]

marshalla said:

Is that permitted under FIA regs ?

FIA said:

The appointed tyre supplier must undertake to provide :
a) Two specifications of dry-weather tyre at each Event, each of which must be of one homogenous compound and visibly distinguishable from one another when a car is on the track. At certain Events one additional specification of dry-weather tyre may be made available to all teams for evaluation purposes following a recommendation to the FIA from the appointed tyre supplier. Teams will be informed about such an additional specification at least one week before the start of the relevant Event.

If that is a FIA rule they should at least spell homogeneous properly..

Taken in isolation that rule only seems to suggest the tyres must be of the similar or same compound. Makes no mention of construction.

[Bill Carr]

Silverstone's rapid bends are mostly right-handers.

[andybu]

I don't know who the non-executive director is on the Pirelli Board, but their role now is to start asking some very pointed questions at the next board meeting.

Starting with:-

1) How is this amount of negative publicity helping our company to sell more tyres for road cars?

And;-

2) Who is going to pay us compensation for the reputational damage?


The company board needs to get a grip on their race unit and give it some very clear and firm directives. I'd be wanting a tyre that could last for ever for the next set of F1 races. And, I'd be thinking twice about renewing my F1 supply contract for 2014 as well.

There is a process for crisis management and subsequent public engagement that all large companies know about and even rehearse (in private). Think back to the Perrier story, BA crash-landing that B777 at LHR and so on. I don't see that the necessary steps are being taken here - not yet, anyway...

[giblet]

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/bilder/pirellis... Is that a rear tyre mounted on the front?

[Buzz84]

So Pirelli issue a statemtnt saying it was all the teams faults for running them the wrong way round, low pressures and they the tyres are perfectly safe when used correctly...

So why are Pirelli now completely re-designing them??? http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2013/7/1474...

[AndrewEH1]

giblet said:

http://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/bilder/pirellis... Is that a rear tyre mounted on the front?

Can't be, there have completely different tyre widths.

[BertBert]

Gorbyrev said:

Great spot from Laurasotherhalf btw!

But by no means conclusive. That is almost certainly a team marking, not a Pirelli tyre marking. It doesn't say that the tyre is on the wrong side. It just says it is on a different side from that first chosen by the team (without remounting). I still don't think we've actually determined what Pirelli allows/doesn't allow.
Bert

[VladD]

Agent Orange said:

Pirelli said:

A SERIES OF DIFFERENT CAUSES LED TO THE TYRE FAILURES AT SILVERSTONE: REAR TYRES MOUNTED THE WRONG WAY ROUND, LOW TYRE PRESSURES, EXTREME CAMBERS AND HIGH KERBS

THE 2013 TYRES DO NOT COMPROMISE SAFETY IF USED IN THE CORRECT WAY

Given Mercedes were one of the teams to suffer a blow out doesn't this suggest they learnt or gained very little knowledge personally from the 1000KM test therefore the FIA ruling against them should be re-examined?

Hamilton implied in an interview after the race that the tyres used during the test were completely different to the ones used at Silverstone.

[BertBert]

I don't think you have a very strong analogy there. The stretching thing only happens if you stretch beyond the elastic limit of the spring. Also there can be several reasons for a tyre being directional (only supposed to rotate one way). The more usual is actually the construction of the rubber - getting de-lamination if rotating the wrong way.

Bert

LaurasOtherHalf said:

the slicks have steel belts yeah? steel is a good material-think of a spring made from steel-most are. so you keep squashing it & it bounces back-great eh?

now, pull the spring instead of compressing it & what happens? the steel weakens, goes out of shape & fails.

so think of the steel belts in the F1 slicks, designed to exert force in one rotational direction which all the teams did.

then swap them over to the other side-these things are obviously designed to go in one direction but have also been twisted already in that direction, something obviously had to give.

add in the high forces of silverstone, curbs & low pressures & i think you can see why they failed

[Life Saab Itch]

Life Saab Itch said:

A couple of pics from practice 2 at Silverstone.

Look at the deformation in the sidewall of the tyres. The last time I saw pics like this in F1, it was the post race analysis of the Indy race when Michelin pulled out in 05.





Pics by PHer GroundEffect

cough

[PascalBuyens]

REALIST123 said:

But swapping them from side to side doesn't alter that, the outside would still be the outside. Pirelli fit the tyres to the rims, the teams can only use them on the other side.

So much of this smacks of no one taking the blame, a concerted effort to wash over the matter by all concerned 'for the sake of the sport'.

According to what Hembery is saying, some teams had the weaker, supposed to be inner sidewall on the outside. Yet he was saying that it was the inner sidewall that was being cut by the kerbs. So would that issue have been worse if the tyres had been fitted correctly? Or did the stronger sidewall also get cut by the kerb.

Bullst......

Not really.
Asymmetrical tyres are made to be used in one rotational sense, meaning they are designed to go forward fastest. Turn the wheel around and you're using the tyre as if you'd be driving your car flat out in reverse all the time. Which those tyres aren't designed for.

Hembereys statement could be quite correct if the wheels have an offset of zero and get swapped from side to side (assuming they are symmetrical), keeping the rotational direction the same or in other words swapping the wheel from side to side without turning it 180 degrees, to "equal out tyre wear". I suspect he is referring to tyres being mounted on different wheels and "placed" on a different corner of the car though.

In that case his statement is entirely correct, inner becomes outer side wall and there you go, first thing to hit the kerb is the softer inner wall...

Edited by PascalBuyens on Wednesday 3rd July 12:36

Edited by PascalBuyens on Wednesday 3rd July 16:44

[giblet]

AndrewEH1 said:

Can't be, there have completely different tyre widths.

I thought as much but there was a chap on twitter claiming it was a rear on the front. I assumed the R marking was for right and not rear. Maybe I'm just missing a whoosh parrot.

[P-Jay]

Agent Orange said:

Pirelli said:

A SERIES OF DIFFERENT CAUSES LED TO THE TYRE FAILURES AT SILVERSTONE: REAR TYRES MOUNTED THE WRONG WAY ROUND, LOW TYRE PRESSURES, EXTREME CAMBERS AND HIGH KERBS

THE 2013 TYRES DO NOT COMPROMISE SAFETY IF USED IN THE CORRECT WAY

Given Mercedes were one of the teams to suffer a blow out doesn't this suggest they learnt or gained very little knowledge personally from the 1000KM test therefore the FIA ruling against them should be re-examined?

I think 'Tyregate' is part of the problem here. If you believe Pirelli and Mercedes (I actually do for my sins) then the test was done to test / evaluate a design to replace the ones that spewed their guts all over Silverstone at the weekend in response to the small number of failures we've saw this year preSilervertsone - Pirelli we already working on a solution BEFORE Silverstone.

If it wasn't for the mass fall out about them using the actual fking cars they were going to be fitted to and driven by the actual fking drivers who were going to use them then the 2013.1 tyres would have probably been used in Canada and there probably wouldn't have been any failures at the weekend.

Of course, Christian Horner had to throw his toys out of his pram, the paddock went wild and Pirelli dropped the new tyres to avoid looking like they were giving Mercedes an unfair advantage - I'm reasonably certain when RB evaluate SV's gearbox from the weekend they'll lodge the failure down to "Karma's a bh".

[ewenm]

giblet said:

AndrewEH1 said:

Can't be, there have completely different tyre widths.

I thought as much but there was a chap on twitter claiming it was a rear on the front. I assumed the R marking was for right and not rear. Maybe I'm just missing a whoosh parrot.

I saw that tweet - wasn't he claiming they were swapping left front for right front? Not swapping front to rear. I think the point he was trying to make is that the swapping isn't limited to the rears.

[PaulMoor]

Buzz84 said:

So Pirelli issue a statemtnt saying it was all the teams faults for running them the wrong way round, low pressures and they the tyres are perfectly safe when used correctly...

So why are Pirelli now completely re-designing them??? http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2013/7/1474...

Because they are now accounting for stupidity...

It seems to me that Pirelli are int he right and the teams are in the wrong. They found that mounting the tyres in the wrong way made them a little faster or whatever, but at no point did anyone in these teams stop and ask "I wonder what these little arrows are for". They just assumed that Pirelli put them on for sts and giggles.

[ecurie]

BertBert said:

Well a man with a lot of experience of such things I was chatting to this week has a very strong view. P race tyres are crap sayeth he. Whoever gave them the F1 contract must be nuts. P race tyres have been exploding for all time. All his opinion of course, but he does know quite a lot.

Bert

As an ex-Bridgestone employee, I know it's all a question of money.
Bridgestone wanted out because of the cost and because after a few years as sole supplier they didn't feel it gave them enough exposure (as in , nobody talked about the tyres anymore).

For a while it seemed Hankook would take over the contract, but in the end Pirelli had deeper pockets (mainly thanks to Pirelli Telecom).

[Agent Orange]

P-Jay said:

I think 'Tyregate' is part of the problem here. If you believe Pirelli and Mercedes (I actually do for my sins) then the test was done to test / evaluate a design to replace the ones that spewed their guts all over Silverstone at the weekend in response to the small number of failures we've saw this year preSilervertsone - Pirelli we already working on a solution BEFORE Silverstone.

If it wasn't for the mass fall out about them using the actual fking cars they were going to be fitted to and driven by the actual fking drivers who were going to use them then the 2013.1 tyres would have probably been used in Canada and there probably wouldn't have been any failures at the weekend.

Of course, Christian Horner had to throw his toys out of his pram, the paddock went wild and Pirelli dropped the new tyres to avoid looking like they were giving Mercedes an unfair advantage - I'm reasonably certain when RB evaluate SV's gearbox from the weekend they'll lodge the failure down to "Karma's a bh".

Yep. Lotus, Red Bull and Ferrari rejected the proposals to introduce the new tyres for Silverstone.

[ayseven]

It boggles my mind to think that the teams would ignore the advice from the tyre manufacturer so easily, and run them backwards. Guys used to run downhill bicycle tyres backwards sometimes too, but for me it just screwed up the handling, and went against common sense. When you think that there is effectively NO suspension in new F1 cars, and that the tyre has to do so much, it seems very odd to ignore the tyre company directives. But it does show how desperate the teams are to get the tyres to last, even when it obviously might hurt them in the long run.