Tyre Helpers

[Mp3 Astra]

Just a quick question about Bridgestone:

Are all the F1 teams allotted one representative from Bridgestone to help them with tyre choice and development, or do they go it alone and improve the tyres with their own engineers?

[schmenke]

Well, the teams don't develop the tyres. They develop their cars to best suit the tyres as provided by B/S. Weather each team includes a dedicated B/S rep to help them, I don't know... Good question though.

[DimitraF1]

jean todt makes the orders for all teams :P hehe who knows? someone must suggesting the tyre compounds for each race

[tinchote]

The big question, more than that of the representative I would say, is who and how decides which compounds to bring to each race. Potentially, some teams could be better suited to some compounds than others.

[ioan]

There is one Bridgestone engineer for each team, at least I saw one in the garages of all the teams that get a TV coverage.
I think that Bridgestone decides the tires they bring to each race based on previous seasons.

[janneppi]

I think the current white tyre thing is useless, last race, every driver except Sutil had the same tyre strategy. There doesn't seem to be any difference in the speeds of the different compounds either.

[ioan]

I think the current white tyre thing is useless, last race, every driver except Sutil had the same tyre strategy. There doesn't seem to be any difference in the speeds of the different compounds either.

There was one more driver that started on harder tyres, was it Liuzzi?

For some of them the harder ones worked better (McLaren) for others the mediums. Also for some reason Felipe's first lap after the last pitstop was the fastest one (on hard tires) but he said he didn't think those were better than the mediums.
I think that the white line makes it more interesting in terms of strategy, the ones to pit first are closely watched and the next ones can adapt and maybe gain some advantage from it.

[janneppi]

I think Hamilton, whose second stint was worse than first (with same compounds) said he had more differences between the same compounds than with harder/medium, could have been a bad set though.

[tinchote]

I think Hamilton, whose second stint was worse than first (with same compounds) said he had more differences between the same compounds than with harder/medium, could have been a bad set though.


I assume they know better, but they did change the wing setup on the second pit stop. So maybe they had a better setup for the hard tyres than for the soft ones. In any case it is hard to tell, because by the time they used the hard tyres, the track was at its best; maybe at the beginning of the race the grip is way less, and it makes hard tyres not such a good option.

[OmarF1]

I was bugging around thinking, can a Driver use soft tyres in the front and hard on the back, or viceversa?, or I'm just being plain stupid?

[ioan]

I was bugging around thinking, can a Driver use soft tyres in the front and hard on the back, or viceversa?, or I'm just being plain stupid?

They can't. Rules do not allow for it.

[OmarF1]

uh ok Ioan thanks, I guess I've got to read some of the rules again.