The peril of Pirelli - Threatening safety in F1

The Pirelli era is now into its third year, and the one thing that has been consistent from 2011 till now is the fact that these tires degrade much faster than any other tire seen before. Over the years, drivers in Formula 1 have had to protect one element or the other – be it the brakes, the engine or the tires.

But today, the driver has to solely focus on saving his tires, a fact that often dictates who prevails and who falls right back the field. Pirelli offers four compounds of tires – the super soft, the soft, medium and hard, with two compounds supplied to the team every race. Such is the degradation on the super softs and the soft tires, that teams have preferred to save the harder compounds or the “primes” for the race rather than the option tires, since the prime tire is faster in the race, something I have never seen before.

Gone are the days when drivers could push themselves and their cars to the limit, setting fastest lap after fastest lap and leaving the viewers in awe. Those were the days when the drivers would run out of fuel much before their tires would even start to ‘go’. But now the situation has changed completely. Mark Webber‘s statement, “I drive 5 fast laps over the weekend, the rest, I’m busy saving my tires” highlights the situation, a situation that is not going to do the sport any good.

These Pirellis have a distinct characteristic. They have a specific operating window, of about 4 laps at most, after which they hit something called the ‘cliff’. After this, they “fall off the cliff” – the tire performance drops drastically, with lap times over 3 seconds slower than those on fresh tires.

The current season kicked off in Australia where we saw the leader pit after a mere 7 laps at most, with their super softs falling off the cliff. I don’t remember any season before this where the tires degraded in only 7 laps! After the first three races, Pirelli decided to change the tires for Bahrain, supplying medium and the hard compounds rather than soft and hard compounds as initially decided.

Pirelli’s tires have also adversely affected qualifying as seen in races this year. Teams, with the aim of saving tires, do not send their cars out before the 10 minute mark in Q1, and often drivers prefer to not run in Q3, so as to have a choice of tires, and fresh tires to start the race with. Thus, Qualifying has lost its importance, with cars being out for lesser time in an attempt to save rubber. This will not go down well with the viewers. Obviously Pirelli has focused way too much on improving the race itself, that they have left out qualifying, which used to be a very exciting one hour affair earlier.

Coming to this weekend in Spain, we saw Alonso winning the race using a four stop strategy, beating Raikkonen on a three stopper. Apart from a total of over 80 pitstops amongst the 19 finishers, what caught my attention is the tire failure or the tire delamination of the Pirellis.

Latest was Paul di Resta‘s rear right tearing itself to shreds as he exited the final corner in Free Practice two. Before this, we saw Mercedes having to change Hamilton’s gearbox because of a similar tyre failure in Bahrain. We then had Felipe Massa‘s Ferrari suffer not one, but two tire failures on Sunday, compromising his race and costing him points.

So, with 5 races done, we’ve seen 3 drivers suffer from tire failures and the safety of Pirelli’s 2013 tires must be taken to consideration. F1 cars travel at over 300 kilometres per hour, and a failure at such a speed would have tragic consequences. I have been watching F1 since the Bridgestone-Michelin era, and never have I seen such a high rate of tire failures.

Before the Spanish Grand Prix, Sergio Perez openly questioned the safety of the tires, and obviously, every driver on the grid is worried and anxious about the same. Tyre degradation is one thing, which has been the focus of the 2013 season, but now, the very issue of safety of the drivers is in the spotlight.

The main question that comes up is whether in an attempt to improve the “show”, has Pirelli compromised on the basic safety which is so essential in Formula 1? Also, has it compromised the essence of the sport? One must also remember that Pirelli does not have a contract for 2014 and beyond. The delay of Pirelli’s contract extension throws up a question – Is FIA looking at an alternative supplier?

All in all, Pirelli needs to up its game, produce better tires, and focus on the basic safety of the drivers.