TBK-Light.com

more like safety car test day, as during wet weather cars stay out while safety car goes around to check track conditions

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: climate change ruining races everywhere

The logic of the teams is priceless, only comparable with Bernie's foolishness:
First they demand better wet weather tyres, then they get a special testing day for that purpose, and you think the teams would be grateful? Nope, "we won't drive, don't want to take the risk".

Well then, don't ever again complain about aquaplaning and "undriveable" conditions. When it eventually rains, I shall laugh when you pay the price for not testing properly. Another testimony of F1 not being able to fix any problems.

they should rent a skid pad to run the cars on controlled wet conditions with no chance of crash, even though they wouldn't go anyway

or just put grooves on the supersoft tyres, how hard could that be?

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: climate change ruining races everywhere

This is literally what Paul Ricard could give them.



This wouldn't end well at all. Also, the wets are softer than the softest slick I think.

More difficult than that.

but they know that one of the main issues is the car itself and the setup than the tires

they test on wet track and wet setup but then in the first wet weather race the cars are fitted with dry setup and parc ferme rules, so the effort is quite lame

_________________
Motorsports trend for 2024: climate change ruining races everywhere

Solution to Pirelli's wet weather problems: ask Michelin or Bridgestone. No issues in the mid 00's.

it's much more complicated than that, actually.

Wet weather rubber is completely different than dry track rubber. Even the ultra soft tire is way too hard for wet conditions which needs compounds especially designed for working temperatures of 20-40ºC while dry tyres will be anything between 80-110ºC, or even more.

edit:

you're completely right. People(drivers, teams) never really liked Pirelli. I remember once Sutil claiming that driving grooved Pirellis were the worst experience he ever had in a car, for instance.

A couple of years ago, teams almost pleaded for Michelin but Bernie didn't want because Pirelli puts lot of money into FOM's pocket(track and specific GP sponsoring.....) while Michelin never did such thing.

Gary Anderson said today that drivers have complained about the inadequacy of wet tyres for as long as he has been involved in F1. I wonder how much of this 'increased' moaning is a result of social media and team radio coverage?

The bold'd bit, perhaps that is the problem, back in the good old days of the 80 and 90's the only difference between dry and wet was wet had grooves cut in it and was a softer compound and unless it was monsoon proportion rain, you rarely saw people aquaplaning off the road at walking pace, in fact in lots and lots of series there wasn't even this, just one all weather tyre that worked perfectly fine at 2ºC in the rain during December at Snetterton and also worked just as well at 35ºC at Silverstone in in the heat of summer (and often it was the same set of Avon tyres ).

Maybe if they (FIA/Pirelli) followed the KIS principle and simply cut grooves into super ultra ultra super soft tyres and the FIA let the teams adjust the setup for the weather, and stopped over complicating thing like having different sized tyres for dry/wet and stopped doing this we need to account for this, this, that and the rain must be coming from the South before the tyre works bullshit, there wouldn't be all these issues that come with testing an untried product in front of the world during a race, there was a reason why wet weather tyre design barely changed for 40+ years, and that's because it worked, it's only since we started having these exotic tyres and tarmac runoffs (so the water has no where to drain to) that we've been having these problems.

If they're going to go to the effort of arranging wet days to test exotic tyres, where's the harm in trying the old methods we relied on for 40+ years, or is that the problem? That the old way might actually work better?

I personally think that pre-season testing should be done on tracks that they don't race on, we often used to get grids at Barcelona of team by team as they all knew the perfect setup for their cars, leading to a very dull race.

That can work with Spec tyres but, apparently, Pirelli seems too imcompetent for it(what could else be?). However, on tyre war situations, manufacturers will always develop specialised(even several types of compounds for dry weather like "hot soft" for specific temps) tyres that will be inevitably faster

On last year's 6 h of Spa, Toyota had tires that had operational temp window 10ºC higher than the tires that Porsche and Audi had and, because it was hotter than the VAGs expected, Toyota had a massive pace advantadge over the long run.

Michelin provides such "all weather tyre" on FE, as there is no tire change there and, as we can see, they work very fine. If that doesn't work on F1, I'll leave for you people to speculate on why...

The last time there was a tyre war in F1, there was also unlimited testing available. There may have been a causal link between the permanent, full time test teams providing data to Bridgestone/Michelin/Good Year, and the resulting quality of the tyres.



WEC teams have considerably more lenient rules on testing, and there is competition between tyre manufacturers. There may be a causal link between the testing data available to Michelin/Dunlop, and the resulting quality of the tyres.



I'm not an expert here, but I have read theories that suggest Formula E cars do not put their tyres under quite as much stress as F1 cars...

I'm surprised there is any speculation here. Michelin's inters were well known as far inferior to Bridgestone's for some time. Good Year pulled out of F1 because they couldn't match Bridgestone on quality and performance. Ditto Pirelli in the early 90s with Good Year. In the early 00s drivers complained constantly that only Ferrari could get Bridgestone tyres to work. Tyres vary in performance and drivers and teams complain about them. This is not new or unusual.

The only difference between then and now is that Pirelli don't even have the luxury of being able to send a team or three to Jerez or Silverstone, and have them lap all day to check a new compound. Pirelli had to wait until last year to even test their upcoming tyres on contemporary cars, and even then the teams couldn't deliver the required downforce.

Today, the teams couldn't even be bothered to commit to properly testing the wet tyres on the one day when a mildly wet track was given to them. At the first wet GP this season, I would put money on drivers complaining that Pirelli can't deliver a good wet tyre.

The only surprise in all of this is that Pirelli even stick around for the inevitable whipping.



I dunno man, I mean they could just make good tyres amirite?

i actually miss the testing during the year.

the week before monza gp they used to go there for a testing session every year. It was amazing.
It was 3 days of f1 running non stop from 9 to 18, usually all teams were there and you were able to go everywhere you wanted ( apart from paddock, but i managed to enter there too, during testing the f1 security was less severe and you could sweettalk track employees ) moving from a turn to another, from a grandstand to another and you would spend just like 15 euros for the ticket. Drivers were more easy to approach, you were even able to find them around the park for a walk and so on.

but they said it costed too much. Same way i say it costs too much to go watch a f1 grand prix so it's since 2008 that i don't see a f1 car running live on track.
actually the teams and the cars were all already there for the race so it was basically fuel, tyres and renting the track, considering the things they waste their money on nowdays it would be nice to bring back the tests.
but also it was only 16 races a year at the time, probably they wouldn't even have the time to do it now.


just curious, how much is the ticket to go and watch montmelò testing?

All I remember from those Monza tests was reports of Huge crashes we'd never get to see.
M.Schumacher rolled his car again in 2001 I believe, as did Ralf a couple of years later. (didn't he miss the race that year??)
Also remember reading reports of James Courtney testing for Jaguar and giving himself concussion in another huge crash in the Monza test

It seemed to be the test where the teams would push the limits of their cars in readiness for the upcoming Grand Prix and sometimes take them too far over the limit, resulting in huge but unseen crashes.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Never heard of a MS roll in 2001, but he did have a tyre failure at 340kph on the S/F straight in 2004 I believe.

Alternatively, I would suggest to keep Barcelona as a test track, and remove it the heck out of the calendar.

A quick google brings up this
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/schuma ... 2001-07-19

But no mention of a roll so either I was reading the wrong websites back then (this one has quite a detailed description which makes it sound a bit like Kimi's crash there in qualifying in 2007) or I'm getting it confused with another incident he had there another year.
Or I dreamt it, who knows?

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Didn't he roll at a Barcelona in testing that year? Turn 1 iirc.

You know, Barcelona has test track written all over it, especially before they butchered the last sector. I'm kinda amazed it's been on the calendar for so long uninterrupted.