Pirelli does not consider the Qatar Grand Prix closed: the technicians of the Milanese company sent some used tires yesterday to Lusail to the Bicocca headquarters where the R&D department is located to continue the laboratory checks useful to understand what happened during the Qatari weekend, when micro-fractures were recorded that generated separations in the shoulders.
The sole supplier of F1 wants to find all the answers to the questions that emerged during the trip to Doha, while it is ready to formalize the renewal of the FIA and FOM for the next few years, giving the right continuity to the serious work carried out to date.
The alarm went off after qualifying on Friday, when Pirelli engineers began analyzing some tires on a random basis, finding micro-fractures in the mobile laboratory that could give rise to pressure losses. Only the microscope had allowed us to observe the problem that arose from the strong stresses caused on the pyramidal curbs chosen to delimit the renovated system.
Pirelli immediately involved the FIA and to avoid any danger for the drivers, they decided together to limit the life of the new sets of tires to 18 laps, i.e. the distance that had been covered before finding the micro-fractures, forcing made the drivers to a race with three stops.
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23, Esteban Ocon, Alpine A523
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
The Milanese technicians were forced to do extra hard work to define in detail the life of each set already used, leaving out both the launch lap and the return lap in the calculation, laps in which the drivers are not only used to exploiting the curbs. We wondered why Pirelli didn’t put all the competitors on an equal footing by providing everyone with sets of new tyres, given that the change in the rules had taken place after the event had already started. The answer didn’t take long to arrive: the Milanese company brought spare sets, but didn’t have the availability to replace the used sets with an equivalent one of the same compound.
Mario Isola, head of Pirelli Motorsport, in addition to wanting to continue the investigation into the Qatar tyres, opens up to a broader analysis: “We need to improve communication – explained the Milanese -, when there are changes to a circuit it is necessary that there is the involvement of multiple stakeholders and not just F1. Why not involve the world of MotoGP, also calling the Motorcycle Federation and Michelin, involving the people who designed the track. We need to improve communication to anticipate problems.”
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