63Corvette

What a brilliant idea!

What exciting racing

I'm gonna go buy some Pirelli tires.............

crease-guard

I bought a set of scrubs to just see what they were like. They are sticky as hell and fast but the sidewall is so soft and flexible you can see the rim edges just above the tarmac on hard cornering. It looksl like the bead is going to break at any second. One of the PST Vipers at had one fail and put the car into the wall at Watkins Glen.

I think I'll rag this set and go back to Hoosiers. If I were to try slicks again, I'd go with the Michelins.

Zoxxo

1. We don't yet know what was going on. The fact that the unexploded tires were showing actual cuts suggests something beyond simple degradation. Lap 7 is pretty early in the race for "degradation" to be playing a part.

2. Pirelli *really* wanted to change the construction before this but the rules require a unanimous agreement amongst the teams to do so and three teams wouldn't agree. I expect that the FIA will step in and mandate the change on safety grounds. Much like the Michelin saga at Indianapolis a few years back, the solution was in front of everyone but the rules (and in that instance, the jackass Max Mosely) decided to let Michelin stew in it rather than have a good, safe race.

Three cheers for F1 politics.

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1991Z07

NOBODY gets F1 "scrubs"...they are all returned to the factory and ground up.

You might have some other Pirelli scrubs from a different series...but not from F1, and that is what is being discussed here.

Pirelli make great tires...nobody can deny that. Where they've run afoul is the specifications the FIA have imposed for this tire degradation so they can put on a better "show" for the fans. It's total BS...let Pirelli build tires like they do for every other series. Make them the best they know how.

The FIA have already scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday...

http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/2...ng-over-tyres/

drivinhard

Obviously it's safer than fuel stops

Zoxxo

This meeting of the Sporting Working Group had already been scheduled prior to this weekend. The Pirelli issue has just been added to the existing itinerary and Pirelli invited to attend.

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froggy47

Those drivers have big ones, almost 200 mph with a grenade on each corner & the pin pulled, unfortunate that the tire fix was held up by "rulz" still the most exciting race, for me, this year.

Two race leaders taken out by mechanical.

And Weber, wtf happened at the start and what a drive to get back near the front.

I am going to watch the whole race over again.

thumbs:

Zoxxo

Yeah, that second one, especially, was a real bummer.

Webber is famous for his crappy starts and he lived up to his rep big time on this one. At least in endurance racing he won't have to be all that concerned by this issue

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VetteDrmr

To me it was a toss-up as to which was the larger screwup: Pirelli tires blowing up on a whim, or NBCSN GIVING US A RACE RECAP AT THE START OF THE BROADCAST!

Fortunately I had recorded both CNBC and NBCSN broadcasts. I started watching the NBCSN copy and was able to turn it off...... right after seeing Hamilton's blowout in the show's intro.

That's pitiful.

But the race was fun to watch. Never knew who was going to be next!

jstewart10

my *&*^%$ cable company had the race on CNBC in the program list, but when i turned it there all I saw were infomercials on hair care

so, i searched an found a free stream of the SKY channel broadcast, and i have to say that I really liked their broadcast team - they had immediate access to all information (much like a nascar broadcast) and actually called the race action

rfn026

They've had 20 blowouts in F1 so far this season. NASCAR and Goodyear have done that in a single weekend.

My favorite is when the TV guys say "A tire went down" NASCAR never has a blowout - they just magically go down.

Richard Newton

Zoxxo

This is reason #1 why I always record the LIVE broadcast of the races and watch that one. Yes, I record the second showing, too, as a backup plan, but that one is never called up unless it's necessary (very rarely.)

NBC is doing OK (I actually only have to squint just a little bit to pretend that I'm still watching Speed) but if they truly want to be "the home of open wheel racing" then they'll need to do better. This jumping around from channel to channel has to be phased out ASAP.

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voda1

Care to share that url?

63Corvette

British Grand Prix 2013: Pirelli were asked to produce low-life tyres which have become potential driver killers
Pirelli find themselves in the doghouse this morning but personally I have a huge amount of sympathy for them.
By David Coulthard, at Silverstone10:00PM BST 30 Jun 201341 Comments
They were asked to develop a high-degradation, low-life tyre which would mean at least two stops per race, the idea being that this would encourage action in the pits and lots of overtaking out on track. And they did their job well. Too well perhaps.
On the one hand we have been rewarded with some dramatic races in recent seasons, certainly compared to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when it was quite processional.
Yesterday’s race was unbelievably incident-packed and, judging from the reaction of the crowd in the grandstands, I think they really loved it.
Unfortunately, we are now in a situation in which the tyres are very susceptible to heat and stress. When running over debris or kerbs we are seeing a high amount of tyre failures. And this is just plain dangerous.
Pirelli should not cop all the flak for this state of affairs. They would like to refine their tyres in order to get on top of these issues but find themselves hampered by the ban on in-season testing and by teams who are paranoid about letting each other gain any advantage.
Whatever Pirelli do, though, they need to do it fast. I had to keep stopping myself from saying it in commentary, but tyre failures are driver killers.

93Polo

It is certainly the FIA getting in the way. Pirelli builds a tire using an old chassis which doesn't get them current info to a degradation spec that F1 wants...

Pirelli then gets the bad rap when the flawed recipe doesn't work. IMO they should test with all the teams at one time on a few tracks using current spec cars.

Zoxxo

What really amazes me in all this stuff - and it's pretty standard "FIA" stuff - is that these rules almost all come about as the result of meetings that include the teams. The testing limitations were implemented by, and agreed to by, the teams themselves as cost-cutting measures. When the topic of reinstating testing comes up it's the LITTLE teams that veto more in-season testing simply because they can't afford it.

This idea that the FIA is enforcing rules that it has imposed from without, by fiat, is misleading a best and totally false in many cases.

It sure does make one wonder why a company would put its reputation on the line for such a bunch of boneheads...

That's precisely what they are going to start doing (again) next year:

At least one of the pre-season tests will be in Bahrain or Abu-Dhabi in order to insure warm/hot weather.

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1991Z07

I can see both sides of their dilemma...

If you tested with TOO many teams, then the data is skewed all over the map. Every teams car is different...and gives different feedback to the track conditions. There is also the cost. Tire testing is paid for by the manufacturer...so the more teams testing the higher the costs for Pirelli.

The problem with sharing the data from tests is your competition can learn things about your cars...and in this realm of high-stakes poker, you don't want your competitors to have free information about why your car is doing good/bad on a race weekend.

And the teams are at the mercy of Pirelli during the test. Pirelli tells them how they want the chassis set up. Once they are dialed in...no changes can be made so they have a baseline to work from. This doesn't give the teams any leeway to try new components or setups to see if they change the way the tires work on your chassis.

In the end...I think what Pirelli needs to do is get a 2013 chassis for themselves and their own test driver to rack up miles. They pay for everything...use a competitive driver from F1 who currently doesn't have a seat. Next year they could use Massa or Webber

Naturally, they would hope to have a representative sampling from the top teams...maybe rotate from Red Bull to Ferrari to Mercedes to Lotus F1. Pirelli keeps ALL data from the tests.

They already have a unique version of the McLaren management software that shuts off external ports so no chassis engineers can download data and see what happened during the runs.

They also have a secondary piece of software that takes ALL the telemetry data and scrubs it clean, sending ONLY the important stuff like engine and gearbox sensors to the "team engineers" so if there were to be a catastrophic failure they can contact the driver and shut down the car. They purge the data from the car once the tests are complete.

The tire manufacturers give the teams parameters for setups...camber between x & y, caster between x & y, etc. It's up to the teams to figure out optimum setups...and Pirelli should keep their test setups to themselves so they don't help any of the teams.

This way they get to test on current chassis and get a representative sampling from the top teams AND nobody gets a leg up on their competition.

froggy47

Gives me a headache trying to find the live and the rebroadcast and on different cable channels almost every race, sheesh.

froggy47

Do F1 tires have an inner like NASCAR tires do? I don't know.

Zoxxo

Yeah, and NBC has done nothing that I can see to make it easy to figure it all out. Their web site re: schedules is screwy and a half.

Here's the upcoming LIVE race schedule:
http://scores.nbcsports.msnbc.com/ra...p?series=FORM1

And you can use this to get info on practice and qualifying sessions:
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/51040773/

Those two (the info in the first URL is contained within the info in the second) combined and cross-referenced with your DVR schedule should get ya close

I try and get this figured out and post the weekend schedule for each race here in this forum prior to the weekend. Here's what I had here last week:

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/auto...s-on-cnbc.html

Z//