And 1mm change in the tyre shape is a huge amount is a huge amount for them. It was the dynamic data, cornering rigidity, vertical rigidity because the biggest single stress is aero induced.
The teams supplied us with a lot of data, the general dynamics of the vehicles and what was expected from the tyres. A lot of things were given to us by FOTA making sure we are careful about certain details around that, so we studied in the simulation. It would have a dramatic impact on the aero if the tyres were changing too much with the speed and load. “This is not so important in the road cars but critical in racing. One of the key areas that the Pirelli engineers focused on was the stiffness of the tyre, both static and dynamic, not so much for the tyres actual performance, rather its shape. In an ideal situation we would have done GP3 followed by GP2 then F1 and essentially scale up over time but we didn’t have that opportunity.” It was a case of an opportunity arising and we went for it. “We spoke in March and he asked if we would consider Formula 1 so we had some internal discussionsw and at the same time there had been some internal discussions with our company owner and we decided to go for it. “I had spoken with Bernie over the years just to keep in contact” reveals Paul Hembrey, Pirelli’s Motorsport Director. It gave the Italian firm just a few short months to design and construct a tyre capable of withstanding the demands of modern grand prix racing. Pirelli was only announced as Formula 1’s sole tyre supplier in June last year after Bridgestone announced its withdrawl in 2009. To the casual observer it may seem that these visually similar tyres have just undergone a rebrand but in reality it is the most significant technical change this season.
But one thing that will be common to all of the cars is the removal of Bridgestone branding from the sidewall of the tyres, in place of bright yellow Pirelli P-Zero logos. This year’s Formula 1 cars look fairly similar to those of 2010, they are dimensionally identical and aside from the return of kinetic energy recovery systems they have no major mechanical changes.
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