Breaking news
Formula 1 Spanish GP
Pirelli: F1 risked Spanish GP "lottery" with unaltered tyres
Pirelli racing manager Mario Isola believes the Spanish Grand Prix would have been a lottery had Formula 1’s tyre supplier not modified its tyres.
Edd Straw
Edited: May 14, 2018, 1:08 PM
Copy link
Share on Viber
The decision to reduce tread depth by 0.4mm was made last month, and was a result of blistering suffered in testing thanks to the increased loads at the resurfaced surface at Barcelona. These tyres will also be used at the French and British Grands Prix.
Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen both suggested this made it more difficult for Ferrari to get the tyres working compared to Mercedes. The change had the desired effect of preventing blistering and 10 of the 14 finishers completed a one-stop race.
"If you have a high level of blistering affecting all or most of the cars, you have a lottery not a race," Isola told Motorsport.com.
"It's not the right approach and we, as a sole supplier, have to provide the same product to everyone that is a safe product, suitable for the circuit and so on.
"I don't think that the slight modification in the tread thickness changed the balance of the performance of different cars."
Vettel suggested the change had made the tyre compound itself harder, a suggestion Isola denied.
Only Fernando Alonso, who had to start on supersofts, and Williams driver Sergey Sirotkin, who had no mediums or softs left when he made his second pitstop, used the softest compound during the race.
"The compound is exactly the same and the construction is exactly the same, the difference is the thickness," said Isola.
"It is difficult to explain from the technical side because if the supersoft was excluded during the race because the general feeling was that it was too soft, the problem is a bit on the other side."
Isola stressed the decision to make the change in tread thickness was made in consultation with the teams, with Ferrari understood to be among those with blistering in testing.This year's pole position time was three seconds quicker than in 2017 and the difference in race pace in the four-to-five second bracket.
"We investigated the reason why we had this blistering, and to be sure that the track surface played the biggest role and not maybe the new cars or the new compounds we had to wait until Melbourne," said Isola.
"Once we confirmed that in Melbourne everything was back to a normal situation, I personally contacted all the teams to ask for their opinion and I collected different opinions.
"After that, we had an internal meeting in Pirelli where we evaluated everything and then we prepared a report for the FIA explaining why we were requesting this change."
Isola also hit out at suggestions the change might have been made to help Mercedes and disadvantage Ferrari.
"We would never do something like that," said Isola."We work with all the top manufacturers, more than just those in F1, so why would we give an advantage to one?"
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
Take our 5 minute survey.
- The Motorsport.com Team
Read and post comments
Read also :
Share Or Save This Story
Copy link
Share on Viber
Previous article Dennis gets surprise Red Bull F1 test call-up
Next article FIA explains why Ferrari winglet has been banned
Top Comments
There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?
View More & Comment
More from
Edd Straw
How the Senna myth has been transformed
Formula 1
Formula 1
How the Senna myth has been transformed
Archive: When the French GP almost produced F1's greatest shock
Formula 1
Formula 1
Archive: When the French GP almost produced F1's greatest shock
The lost F1 team that launched Adrian Newey
Formula 1
Formula 1
The lost F1 team that launched Adrian Newey
Latest news
Spire, Chris Gabehart reject Joe Gibbs Racing premise on deleted texts
NASCAR Cup
NAS NASCAR Cup
Charlotte II
57 min
Spire, Chris Gabehart reject Joe Gibbs Racing premise on deleted texts
Ricky Stenhouse explains his side of Michael McDowell conflict
NASCAR Cup
NAS NASCAR Cup
Charlotte II
4 h
Ricky Stenhouse explains his side of Michael McDowell conflict
Barnes: Why IndyCar’s updated licensing system fails its own integrity test
IndyCar
Indy IndyCar 5 h
Barnes: Why IndyCar’s updated licensing system fails its own integrity test
Why NASCAR is not penalizing Stenhouse, McDowell for post-race theatrics
NASCAR Cup
NAS NASCAR Cup
Charlotte II
7 h
Why NASCAR is not penalizing Stenhouse, McDowell for post-race theatrics
Feature
Discover prime content
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
You have 2 options:
- Become a subscriber.
- Disable your adblocker.
Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here
Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page
Manage Alerts
Subscribe