In Friday’s debrief in Monaco, Simone Berra, Chief Engineer at Pirelli, focused on the C6 tyres, which made their debut at Imola and caused significant headaches for some teams, including Ferrari. For them, the compound proved too inconsistent, making it difficult to generate grip in the final part of a qualifying lap. This led to several surprises, including Ferrari’s elimination in Q2 and some drivers unexpectedly opting for mediums for their decisive run. The issue wasn’t with the compound’s robustness, but rather with some teams failing to properly understand its characteristics from the outset. Conversely, other competitors managed to extract the maximum from it, taking full advantage of its high peak performance.
On this point, Simone Berra explained that the key lies in a secret some teams uncovered in tyre preparation, starting with the tyre blankets:
“We’ve seen that some teams experimented with the tyre blankets for the C6. Some decided to lower the blanket temperatures from the 70 degrees [maximum allowed by regulations] to try and shift the grip peak — not during the out lap or the first part of the flying lap at Imola, but to maintain it more consistently throughout the whole lap.” – the Italian manager pointed out ahead of Saturday’s track action at the Circuit de Monaco.
This solution could also be the turning point for Ferrari, which has struggled this season to hit the soft tyre’s peak performance during qualifying laps. Could this be the secret behind Ferrari’s strong Friday in Monaco? If they can resolve the shortcomings seen on Saturdays while maintaining their strong race pace on Sundays, the SF-25 could edge closer to the front.
Leave a Reply