The Black Stuff

If there is one phrase I wish banished to the fiery pits of hell, it is “Sorry sir, we can’t serve you another drink, you’ve had too much.” In a close second, though, is “You need to look after your tyres”.

In terms of the bigger picture, 2012 seems to be building up to be one of the most exciting seasons in living memory, hopefully living up to and eclipsing the epic 2010 year when there were five men scrapping for the World Championship across 3 teams going into the last few races.

In terms of individual races, though, there have been many times when the action has been lacking. In fact, at most races, there is only one point of contention – tyres. Drivers are being forced to go to incredible lengths to protect their tyres, often at the detriment of actual racing. You can’t blame them for this, as ultimately while the teams want to put on a good show they need points more, and looking after tyres is how you get them these days. Still, this needs to stop, and there are two jolly good reasons for it.First, the current generation of Pirelli rubber simply doesn’t allow for close racing, and that is what F1 is supposed to be all about. This is especially true these days, when you have perhaps the most gifted field in history and devices such as KERS and DRS are designed to principally help the cars deal better with one another at close quarters. With the Pirelli rubber, though, spin the rears in a desperate bid for traction or lock up the fronts making a dive for the inside and it doesn’t matter if you get past or not, your boots are shot. Just look at Canada – Alonso and Vettel so compromised themselves actually racing that they slipped off the podium.

The second problem is more of a philosophical one – F1 is about, and always has been about, building the fastest car you can and going racing in it. While this tenant still remains somewhat true this year  - Red Bulls will always be further up the grid than an HRT – ultimate pace is playing second fiddle to tyre management, and that just seems wrong. Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari should not be able to be beaten by a Sauber because he had the audacity to want to do what he is paid very well to do.

So, where have Pirelli gone astray?

In some ways, Pirelli seem to have forgotten their brief. When they came in to F1, they were charged with making sure that their tyres provided the sorts of racing we saw at the topsy turvy 2010 Canadian race. To do this, they started off by offering tyres which both degraded highly and wore highly, and although they were tremendous fun, they were a bit too extreme. Eventually Pirelli seemed to get it right, offering combinations of compounds which had finite lifespans but and were tough, but now they’ve spun the other way and it seems that the best way to succeed with Pirelli tyres is to just drive mid paced, consistent laps.

I’ve always said that the big thing with tyres in this no refueling era is that the rubber needs to become an equatable commodity to fuel. By that, I mean that there needs to be a clear choice as to whether it is going to be quicker to run slowly on two sets of tyres or push hard and stop 2 or 3 times. That way you have different cars on different strategies racing, not a parade waiting to DRS each other so they don’t risk hurting their boots.

Hopefully Canada will spur the teams on to be less conservative with strategy and worry more about overall pace. As we saw, Hamilton 2 stopped and cars who were winging it paid a huge price by slipping off the podium. Perhaps he’s shown that, for the top guys at least, it is better to stop more and actually race. Then again, the short pit stop time in Canada could have been just as big of a factor and at tracks where stopping for rubber is closer to 30 seconds than 15, the teams will just continue to be conservative.

Either way, Pirelli needs to change something. Whether it is altering compounds to have higher degradation and lower wear to provide tougher tyres that won’t give up after a few lock ups but will ultimately fall off the pace after a number of laps, or bringing back the step in compounds to have a bigger time difference per lap depending on the compound, action needs to be taken.

F1 is not about lapping conservatively and trying to outlast the opposition.