Sole F1 tyre supplier Pirelli says it will change almost all of its compounds ahead of the 2013 season. Since the start of this year, teams have complained that narrow operating windows are too difficult to work with, despite the formula have thrown up a number of unexpected results and situations for race fans.
In 2012, teams have been faced with a major challenge of attempting to discover precisely under which conditions the tyre compounds work. On numerous occasions, drivers have lost handfuls of positions as their tyres suddenly fall out of the operating window and ‘off the cliff’ in the closing stages of a race.
“I am quite sure that we’ll be changing all of the compounds for next year,” Paul Hembery, Pirelli’s Motorsport Director, revealed at Suzuka. “Probably the Intermediate is the only one which will actually stay the same. If anything, we’ll try and make it a bit easier for the teams to have a working range.”
At the same time, Pirelli and Hembery want to be careful in avoiding Formula 1 races which could feature only one-pit stop and less unpredictability for each driver.
“We are probably going to go for some more aggressive compounds as well,” the Englishman continued. “This year, in general we have averaged one pit-stop less per car; if that trend carries on then we would soon be back to one stop at every race, so we need to do something to give it that extra challenge.
“We want to change the dynamic properties of the tyres, so one area we’ve been looking into is combined traction – that’s the transition you have when you go from the braking phase to putting the power back out. Overall, next year the teams will know how to adjust their cars to get what they want out of the tyre package; from that point of view, it will still be a cause of learning tyres.”
Pirelli returned to F1 in 2011, taking over from Bridgestone.
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