Mario Isola, the Head of F1 and Car Racing at Formula 1’s sole tyre supplier Pirelli is confident that understeer will be less of a problem with the proper 2022 cars.
“Talking to the teams, they believe that they can balance the new cars quite easily. They told me that they are not worried at all about the understeer, and they knew that with the new cars, they were expecting a bit of that. So they seem to be not worried at all.” – he explained.
After the first day of the Abu Dhabi test Pirelli made a change to the parameters it had given the teams in attempt to dial out some of that understeer.
“Looking at the data that we got from the teams, we saw a margin in the pressure, especially in the front pressure,” – Mario Isola commented.
“So we added the possibility to decrease the front pressure for today by 1.5 psi. That was useful to reduce the understeer, obviously giving more footprint on the front and reducing the graining, especially on the C3. We still have some abrasion and graining on the C4 and C5, but they are the softest compounds, so it makes sense. But with this reduction in pressure is C3 was working better.”
That front pressure drop was from 21.5 to 20.0 psi, while Isola confirmed that the rears stayed at a low 17.5 for the two days.
As a comparison for the race weekend the respective numbers were 23.0 front, and 21.0 rear. In other words, we will get used to seeing much lower starting pressures.
“We know that with the new sides, the 18-inches, the rear construction is in terms of integrity is more robust,” said Isola. “And this is why we have the possibility to drop the pressure to 17.5. That is quite low also compared to the 13-inches tyre.”
Aside from low starting pressures teams also have to get used to the lower blanket temperatures mandated for 2022, and which in turn impact how drivers warm up the tyres once they’re on track.
“We are using the blanket temperature that we decided to introduce from 2022,” said Isola. “That means that the front tyres are heated at 70 degrees, and not 100, and the rear tyres are at 70 degrees, and not 80. So from next year, the maximum temperature in blankets with be 70 and 70. That is the same temperature that we have used during our tyre development tests. The comments from drivers were on the C1, in some cases, they had to push quite a lot to get the temperature into the tyre. So that means a couple of laps to have the tyres ready. But we know that the C1 is not the tyre for Abu Dhabi.” – he added.
“For the C2 it was a bit easier. And from C3, C4 and C5, they didn’t complain about the warm up, they didn’t have any issue on warm-up. This year we tried to design the new compounds with a wider working range, but without sacrificing too match the warm-up phase, because we knew that we wanted to go down with temperature in the blankets. So that is a confirmation of what we found during the tyre tests.” – the Pirelli official concluded.
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