F1 TEAMS REJECT 2020 TYRES

F1 Teams reject 2020 tyres – Photo: LAT

It is rare that all 10 F1 teams agree on anything, but they have voted unanimously to reject Pirelli’s 2020 tyre concept.

By DAN KNUTSON

Pirelli has come under fire for its 2019 tyres for their narrow working window and drop off in performance if they are overheated.

So the goal for the 2020 tyre was for it to have a wider temperature working window, less degradation and less overheating. The drivers and teams got to sample the prototype 2020 tyres during Friday practice in Austin and during the two days of postseason testing in Abu Dhabi. For the most part, they were not impressed.

“They are different,” Romain Grosjean said of the 2020 tyres. “There are some positives and there are some negatives. If you ask me if I’m very happy about the new tyres, and if this is going to solve some of the problems, the thermal degradation, sensitive to following another car…I just have to tell the truth, and say no, it’s not going to change that problem fully.”

“I have to say that it felt that there was nothing better found from these new tyres,” Valtteri Bottas said. “I got an impression that they were even a little bit slower compared to the old ones. They behaved in the same way.”

Pirelli’s racing chief Mario Isola said that Pirelli was happy to provide either the 2019 or the 2020 tyres next season.

“If you develop something, it’s the same for aero parts or the engine, that development means sometimes you can be successful,” Isola said. “Sometimes you believe that you have the best solution in the world and then you discover on track it’s not working as expected. It’s important that we learn from this in order to have a better process, or a better connection with the teams for the future. There are already some ideas, that I will tell you at a later stage, for the future on how to improve the process.”

Pirelli said in a statement there were several reasons that the teams, Pirelli and the FIA decided to stick with the 2019 model.

*The teams will no longer have to modify the designs of their 2020 cars, which would otherwise have been necessary to accommodate the different profile of the 2020 tyre construction.

*This will now allow the teams to continue the development of their 2020 cars – which are already at an advanced stage – uninterrupted.

*The use of the 2019 tyres also guarantees the teams stability, with the advantage of using a well-known product during the final season of the current regulations.

Pirelli will take what it learned with 2020 construction tyres to develop them further for the 18-inch era from 2021, which allow lower tyre pressures than those used at the moment. As a result, they are able to compensate for the increased performance expected from the next generation of cars.

In order to have time to build and ship tyres for preseason testing and the first races of 2020, Pirelli gave the teams a deadline of 9 December to decide if they wanted the 2019 or 2020 model.

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