Mario Isola, head of Formula 1 and Car Racing at Pirelli, confirmed that the 2022 Formula 1 chamionship may lose a strategic element, given the fact that the structure of new 18-inch tyres will allow teams to finish the race with just a single pit stop in most cases.
As Formula 1 is ready to make the switch from 13-inch to 18-inch wheels, the tyre testing programme was completed after the last round of the 2021 Formula 1 season in Abu Dhabi at the Yas Marina circuit, just before Christmas all Formula 1 teams except Williams ran ran mule cars to test the new larger designs.
After analyzing the data gathered during the testing session, Mario Isola has already confirmed that lap times should be comparable to the 2021-spec cars, at least according to the performance of the Pirelli tyres:
“We are expecting a performance that is in line with the current tyres, but the car is different, the downforce is different and maybe we will have a small difference in performance,” Mario Isola explained in a recent interview with Tire Technology International.
However, despite the fact that the pace should be the same, Pirelli feel there will be fewer pit-stops next season:
“I’m expecting most of the races will be one-stop, simply because if you have less degradation there is no reason to have more than one-stop,” he said, but added that he doesn’t view this aspect as a negative one – “If we have really close racing and we have action on track, who cares about the pit-stops?”
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According to the rules, the Pirelli testing session at the Yas Marina circuit was completed with modified versions of older cars, primarily from 2018 and 2019, as supplied by the teams for such a purpose. Mario Isola admitted that it was not easy to use cars which are different from the ones that will actually run the tyres next season:
“Every year is the same. We never have the possibility to test something on the final version of the car. We always use cars that are not what we are going to use the following season, simply because they are not available, so it’s part of the challenge. With a bigger diameter wheel, they had to trim the floor in the back and adjust the suspension. The teams had to work around the car in order to fit the new tyres and adjust the ride height.” – the Pirelli head of Formula 1 and Car Racing added.
Another important aspect is the fact that the braking systems and their architecture changes for the 2022 Formula One campaign, esepcially because of the introduction of wheel covers.
“Currently, they use the brakes a lot to define the heat that is going into the rim to achieve a certain temperature of the air and, therefore, the [tyre] pressure that they want to achieve. Next year, the space between the rim and the brake is much bigger, you don’t have two millimetres, you have a space that is much bigger. With the new regulations, air has to go inside, so they cannot play around with the brakes to use this heat coming from the brakes to achieve a certain level of temperature in the tyre. That is a completely different situation to what we have this year.” – Mario Isola concluded.
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