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Pirelli: No tyre compound overhaul in 2015
Pirelli has ruled out an overhaul of its tyre compounds in Formula 1 this year, despite teams exploiting its conservative choices to eke out more one-stop strategies.
Jonathan Noble
Edited: Jun 15, 2015, 11:06 AM
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Formula 1's tyre supplier had elected to be less aggressive with its options for this year amid fears that a dramatic step forward in pace from teams would result in its rubber being pushed to the edge.
But in the end, the speed jump has not been as big as expected, and improvement from the cars have meant they are pushing the tyres less than before.
Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery believes the changes have been enough to edge F1 towards one-stop races, but he thinks it would be wrong for his company to change tact and become more aggressive for fears it could impact on the championship battle.
"The teams are getting more laps out of tyres, with less degradation levels from previous seasons," Hembery told Motorsport.com.
"It means that we are seeing one pitstop less than we would actually like. We have been clear that we have been asked to provide two to three, and over the last few races we know and you know that one-stop is more likely the strategy.
"So, that's where we need to look at for next year."
He added: "We don't want to change anything during the season because teams have set the level this year and we would be wrong to do so.
"Unfortunately five laps difference is where you need to go from one-to-two to two-to-three stops, and that's the fine margin we are dealing with, because it is almost impossible to test these days."
Lack of pace to blame
Hembery says a key reason for the movement towards one-stop races is that car performance has not moved forward as much as his company had predicted.
"We probably over-anticipated the performance that we had and what we are seeing currently," he said.
"We saw significant pace improvements in Melbourne and suddenly we find ourselves back in line at the same levels as last year.
"So that in itself is a surprise to us from what we were seeing early on, and that of course had a big impact on things like wear and degradation.
"Let's see where we go towards the end of this season but certainly for next year it has given us an indication of what we need to do."
Increasing tyre choice
Pirelli is in talks with teams about trying to find a way of varying the tyre choices at races in 2016, with outfits able to select the compounds they want to use.
Although Pirelli is reluctant to give teams free reign, Hembery has suggested that one solution could be to open up some choices at select events, perhaps by having tyres tailored to the demands of specific tracks.
"I think externally there will always remain four compounds in the series, so as not to confuse people," he said.
"But maybe you can have different versions of the main compounds so that you can maybe fine tune it for an individual event."
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