With Bridgestone adamant they are leaving the sport at the end of this year, and the likes of Pirelli and Avon adding their names to the list of those who want to supply Formula 1′s tyres in 2011, a return to a tyre war grows ever more likely, but would it be good for the sport?
It is obvious that if you have a tyre war there is going to be a bigger gap between the cars’ performance. Is this a bad thing? Maybe Formula 1 needs more variation on track. It would certainly add more interest by increasing the unpredictability of the racing.
However if one tyre manufacturer is streets ahead of another, then it renders the sport a no-contest, but if two tyre manufacturers are fighting to have the best racing tyre technology on the planet then surely there won’t be a gap big enough to see a team on one type of rubber thrashing a team on another.
In recent years F1 speeds have been excessively high and the new aerodynamic regulations tried to slow the cars down. Gone are the gills and wings of 2008 to slow the cars down. However if a tyre war was brought in this would all be undone. F1 lap times would rocket and the safety of the sport would undoubtedly be called into question once more.
There is one other issue with the tyre war idea though, and it is a mammoth one. Teams like HRT or even Sauber which are run on very tight budgets (so much so that apparently Sauber are going to replace Pedro de la Rosa with pay driver Pastor Maldonando) will not be able to afford a tyre war. It is something else on their already excessively long expenditure report.
If you want the best rubber then you are going to have to pay the highest prices for it, that’s obvious, but a tyre war would throw up more hidden costs. Testing and developing tyres takes up huge amounts of time and money which some teams will not be able to afford. The current testing regulations would have to be changed to allow for more tyre time, or we would end up with a wrong tyre selection and Indianapolis 2005 all over again.
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I think a tyre war is good, but you have you introduce a supply cost requirement, equivalent to a budget cap.
e.g. companies must be prepared to supply the whole grid (if all teams want their tyres) at a cost cap of say 3m per year (or some other well considered figure).
That was smaller teams are guaranteed access to any tyre at a reasonable cost.
If tyre companies want to spend their way to success then it won’t affect the smaller teams, and they’re more likely to recoup their investment by having more customers asking for their tyres.
This approach could be extended to engine supplies too.
The fact that the supplier has to supply anyone who wants their tyres means one team can’t be the only one with a performance advantage and dominate in a way that the Ferrari/Bridgestone combination did in the early 00s
The big and only real issue I have with a tyre war is that when laptimes tumble then the FIA will clamp down on technical freedom and design. I’d muchy rather innovation was explored rather than just making good use of the rubber.
“The fact that the supplier has to supply anyone who wants their tyres means one team can’t be the only one with a performance advantage and dominate in a way that the Ferrari/Bridgestone combination did in the early 00s”
To be fair, that wouldn’t change. Take a tyre company and they will spend more time working closer with a team who is capeable of winning than the cars at the back. What has taken away that possiblity to some extent, is the severe lack of testing at present.
I think it will hit the teams slightly now that it looks like their sweet deal with Bridgestone has gone and they are goingn to have to folk out money.
Indy was the low point of the last tyre war but I don’t exclusively blame just the tyre war but Michelin were a bit dense with the mistake they made. The Bridgestone teams could have compromised but if I was in their situation I would have done the same thing =easy points for their supplier getting it right. A compromise was never going to work.
the only thing i really really miss from F1 (and moto GP too) is the tyre war. it gives more tense and more fight, lol