Ferrari tries again a year later
The first Free Practice session officially kicked off the 101st edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mansone year after the historic triumph of Ferrari 499P #51 by Alessandro Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado. Now, 365 days after that success, the objective of the Maranello company is obviously to repeat itself on the Circuit de la Sarthe, even if on the eve of the tests there were some declarations from Antonio ColettaHead of the Ferrari Endurance and Customer Racing Department.
From Spa resort to tyres
One of these is related to the case of the last 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, and in particular on the official presentation of the appeal against the decision taken by the FIA on that occasion on the extension of the race to almost two hours, a fact which had denied an almost certain Ferrari double. The other aspect, which instead focuses on the event on French soil, is inherent to another specific request from Ferrari, this time on tire temperature control.
Controls first of all
From this season, in fact, the regulation it no longer requires the use of pre-heated tireseven if in this regard Coletta demands guarantees on the verification of tire temperatures, in order to generate fair conditions for all teams: “The tire issue will be fundamental at Le Mans this year, for performance and safety – he explained in the press conference, as reported by p300.it – on the second topic we are all a little worried because when the temperatures drop there will be problems great risks. The situation is the same for everyone, I don’t see why this choice would benefit anyone. The control of the sports authorities will be very important as we have already seen races where someone was very good at fitting hotter tyres. I believe that on a track like this, where you lose more than 15 seconds with cold tyres, it would be it is unacceptable not to have absolute control of temperatures. We must be sure that the rules are respected, otherwise creating them and not having control over them would be a contradiction. This rule determines performance and a significant difference in lap times. I wouldn’t want the 24 Hours of Le Mans to be decided by tire warm-ups during the night. Having said that, we hope that all the drivers can manage the cold tires without problems because with the very long straights the temperatures drop even more. I think it’s too late to go back to the heaters now, the pits are already set up and would need to be re-equipped, it would be a complicated exercise and, what’s more, I don’t think there is the desire to discuss this rule. On our part there will be an effort to resist the lap on cold tyres, on the other the race direction will have the task of enforcing the rules“.
#Mans #Ferrari #thunders #Absolute #tire #control #needed
