#11106921, By iancognito Motorsport

iancognito 24 Aug 2015 09:58:30 2,476 posts
Seen 6 years ago
Registered 14 years ago

dsmx wrote:
@iancognito If ferrari thought that then whoever made that call needs their head examining, 40 laps of Spa is 280 km or so, there's no way the tires pirelli have been told to make would make that distance. At a push they will get to 50% race distance so 28 laps is well past the designed life of the tire.

I'm not saying it was a good idea, and in hindsight it really wasn't, but they were told 40 laps by Pirelli. I saw it on an interview on Sky and passed on the information. Arrivabene in particular seems to be replying to your comment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/34035036

Vettel also expressed his anger to Paul Hembery after the race, saying that Ferrari had been told they could do 40 laps on the tyre. It failed after 28 laps of that stint in the race.

Hembery said: "It was at the end of wear life and when you do that, any tyre in the world, when it gets to its wear life, you're going to have a problem."

However, he admitted that Pirelli had not warned Ferrari that they were taking a risk by running the tyre that long.

And from Autosport (I'll copy a wall of text here as they only provide limited views to non-subscribers.

Although Hembery has confirmed Pirelli provided the teams with an indication tyres would last 40 laps, he insists that is not a guarantee as circumstances of a race play a part. "It [Vettel's tyre] was at the end of wear life. Any time in the world, when it gets to the end of its wear life then you're going to have a problem," said Hembery. "We thought the strategy was going to be based on two, three stops as you saw the majority do. They [Ferrari] felt clearly they could make it work on the one-stop. The wear life was indicated at around 40 laps, but it's an indication. You don't guarantee because it's variable car-to-car, on the race conditions, race situation. Sometimes it's not a precise data.

Ferrari Formula 1 team boss Maurizio Arrivabene says there was nothing "stupid or crazy" about the one-stop strategy that ended in tyre failure for Sebastian Vettel when set for third.

...

Although Vettel was the only driver to try a one-stop tactic in a race Pirelli had suggested would require two tyre changes, Arrivabene said the decision was based on solid data that the tyres would last. "The strategy was absolutely right," he said. "I want to clear that up immediately, because when we do the strategy we have the data, and the data is based on the strategy.

...

"But I tell you the strategy normally, even if aggressive, is based on clear data. We are not so stupid or crazy to take a risk for the driver if you are not reading quite well the data."

Arrivabene said Ferrari had gone into the race planning one stop for Vettel rather than adopting the strategy as the grand prix unfolded. "It was our main plan before the race. We decided that at 11 o'clock this morning," he said. He insisted there was no warning from Pirelli during the race of any potential problem. "All the teams have an engineer from Pirelli, and what do you think that engineer is doing?" Arrivabene said. "He's not there to chew chewing gum, he's there to check the tyres and to read the data from the team."