The last Mexican Grand Prix will certainly not be remembered as one of the most exciting races of this Formula One season. The fight for the win between the top drivers of the 2021 championship, Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, ended all too soon and from that moment there was not too much for the fans to appreciate in front of the TV until the checkered flag.
“It was a flat race,” explained Martin Brundle, former Formula 1 driver and now commentator for Sky UK – “According to the tire assignment rules, the teams have only two sets of hard tires available. That is less than needed to be able to carry out adequate tests during the Friday practice session.” – the Englishman pointed out, when asked about the Mexican Grand Prix.
And in fact, if Mercedes had tried a stint with the white tire during free practice, it probably wouldn’t have used them again in the race, following instead the winning strategy adopted by Red Bull and also by Ferrari (but with less success due to the poor race pace of the F1-75 cars at the 4.304-kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City).
But the real issue, according to Martin Brundle, is not so much the rules for assigning tires, but those that required teams to carry out tests on the 2023 Pirelli tires during some free practice of the current Formula 1 season. If we add to this that the regulations also require teams to entrust the car to rookie drivers for at least two sessions a year, it is understandable that in these cases the time available for the development of the car and for preparing the strategy for the race weekend is very little.
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“Many teams are late in running their rookie drivers in FP1,” explained Martin Brundle. “If we add to this the fact that in Texas and Mexico the second free practices were dedicated to Pirelli tests, then obviously, doing so greatly affects the normal activity of the teams. The show on track suffered due to this situation.” – the Sky commentator feels.
Martin Brundle thus suggests changing the test format. The Englishman is aware that, with a Formula 1 calendar of 22 races, set to increase to 24 next year, scheduling test days between races would be crazy.
The solution, according to Martin Brundle, would therefore be to dedicate a few Mondays after the race weekends to young drivers. The rookies would thus be able to gain experience without affecting the work of the teams and at the same time would be able to test the tires for the following season. In this way, Pirelli could collect important data and the teams would be able to carry out their usual race preparation activities starting on Friday.
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