Pirelli to request F1 waste tyre regulation

Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery has told Autosport.com that the tyre supplier to Formula One will seek a regulation change for 2012 to stop teams from wasting allocated rubber. The manufacturer currently supplies 11 sets of tyres to each driver – split between six harder and five softer compound P Zeros – which is resulting in wasted harder tyres, as teams prefer to run the quicker tyre. The fact that the softer, quicker compound will degenerate more quickly is circumvented by teams running less frequently, especially in qualifying, which has resulted in farcical sessions during which some drivers opt not to compete so as to preserve the softer tyres. The concern of waste tyres for Pirelli operates on both an ecological and an economical level, as the motorsport director explains.

“At the moment,” Hembery told Autosport, “if the teams want to keep the same regulations then we will have to go to the FIA and tell them there is no point in having six sets of one and five sets of the other – we may as well have five and five and we save money. We have to take these extra tyres to every race, so if they don’t want to change the sporting regulations then we can give them the stats that it is 100 per cent certain they are not going to use them, change the regulations and save us all money. The FIA does have a role to play in terms of regulations, and we need to have stimulation from them, because it is a cost that has no benefit to the teams, the sport or Pirelli. It is nonsense.”

Hembery revealed Pirelli’s concern with wastage was compounded by its costs in supplying Formula One with fitted tyres that were going to be destroyed having never been used: “We fitted the tyres, brought them to races and then we destroy them – so it is very hard for us hearing that teams haven’t got enough tyres when they actually have plenty of tyres. They are just not using them.

“We went to the teams to look into lightly changing the regulations. The simple way we thought we could get rid of the top teams avoiding running in Q3 [the third qualifying session] would be to invert the allocation. So you had six of the soft set and five of the hard. Then, after FP1, you took away one of the hard sets, so five becomes four. Follow the same regulations through; you will end up doing qualifying and the race with four sets of the soft tyre and then two of the hard.

“So, in that scenario, the top teams would use one hard for first qualifying, two soft and then have two sets of soft tyres for the race. That would have eliminated the problem. But that was not unanimously accepted.

Hembery concluded his interview with Autosport: “At the end of the day it is for their benefit. We are just saying it seems bizarre to be in this situation of having new sets of tyres at the end of the race, when during the weekend there have been some occasions when teams are reluctant to run. We want to sit down and find a way to eliminate that need. It doesn’t cost anyone in the sport any more money, the only thing it will cost us is time in a meeting room to come up with something that works for everybody.

“At the moment I wouldn’t say there is an impasse but they [the Formula One teams] have decided they want to stick with the current regulations but we need to return to that because in many ways it is nonsense.”