Performance the public can’t see – Hembery’s take on a F1 tyre war

Last week Pirelli’s motorsport director again spoke out against the possibility of Formula One returning to a multiple tyre supplier championship. Paul Hembery commented to Autosport.com that a so-called tyre war would not make sense, as in his opinion it would make the racing less exciting and could adversely affect audience numbers.

“We work for the sport,” stated Hembery. “The sport has to decide what it wants. If it wants a tyre war and procession racing again, like it did in the early 2000s, when the audience disappeared, than that’s one approach. It’s not for us to decide. We will wait and see if the rules change.”

Hembery questioned the benefit of introducing such a change. “What does it really mean to have a tyre war? If it means spending 100 million euros to go half a second quicker, and you can’t even prove that you have the better tyre, because the teams will dominate still, it is pointless…Ultimately, no one could really make out what tyres were on what car when there was a tyre war. Nobody knew, because all the money was being spent on trying to find performance that the public couldn’t see. And if the public can’t see it, we don’t understand it.”

The motorsport director also shared that the teams he’d spoken to don’t want to return to a tyre war. “They see it as money wasted on an area they can’t control, and have limited value to the public,” he commented.