Pirelli rules out new tyre for Silverstone as Vettel canters to Canada win

Sebastian Vettel used two stops to saunter to his 29th career victory at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Canada. Vettel started on the P Zero Red supersoft tyre to sprint ahead of a similarly shod top 10 before switching to the P Zero White medium and completing the race with a final stint on this tyre. Despite wet qualifying conditions, Pirelli also completed some testing of its tweaked rear tyres in Friday practice, and Motorsport director Paul Hembery said the manufacturer would analyse the data gathered “over the next few days” before summarising the differences in performance.

The wet weather has appeared to put paid to the idea of introducing the new tyres at Silverstone however, as Hembery told Autosport.com that “We are not going to race with the new tyre as we did not get much of a chance to test it [in Canada].” Pirelli will change something though – the brand plans to revise bonding procedures on the current specification tyres, which should help to reduce the chance of tread delamination. Pirelli currently plans also to bring the new construction rears to Britain to allow teams another chance at testing.

Back in the racing, Pirelli says the softest tyre in its Formula One range was up to a second faster than the medium with a rapid warm-up time, making it a key element of Vettel’s sprint strategy. It was Red Bull Racing’s first victory on this circuit.

Force India’s Paul Di Resta was the highest-placed driver to try something different, having started from 17th on the grid with the medium tyre. The Scot stopped only once after 56 laps on the medium compound to finish seventh. Romain Grosjean’s Lotus and the two Marussias were the only other cars to begin the race on the harder compound. Canada’s pit lane costs drivers the least amount of time of anywhere on the F1 circuit, so the strategy to sprint on the softer rubber generally makes the most sense. With few opportunities to run the slick compounds before the race due to wet weather, Pirelli said that teams had to adopt a flexible approach to their strategy today. However both wear and degradation rates remained low, as expected.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery said: “The Canadian Grand Prix was a slight step into the unknown for everybody, with track temperatures considerably higher than they had been in qualifying yesterday. Canada is one of the most challenging circuits for the rear tyres due to high traction demands– particularly after it has rained previously in the weekend, because the moisture has the effect of washing away all the rubber that has been laid down before, which decreases grip levels further. Despite that, wear and degradation was under control for all the frontrunners and there was little of the graining that is a common feature of this race as well.

“Mercedes still seems to be suffering from high levels of degradation with Nico Rosberg being the only driver in the top 10 having to use a three-stop strategy. While two stops was clearly the way to go, Paul Di Resta drove an excellent race to show what was possible with a one-stopper, completing 56 laps on his first set of medium tyres.”

Teams test new slick rear tyre construction

Two sets of an experimental new Pirelli medium tyre, using a new Aramide rear construction, were allocated to each driver for Friday’s two free practice sessions, with the weekend’s two nominated compounds, P Zero White medium and P Zero Red supersoft, also at their disposal.

Rain in the first free practice session meant that teams only got around 20 minutes of dry running at the very end of the hour and a half, having first run the Cinturato Green intermediates and to a lesser extent the Cinturato Blue wets. Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne was the first to sample the new slicks. Force India’s Paul di Resta put in a quick lap on the medium tyres to set the fastest time before a yellow flag effectively ended the session.

The afternoon remained cool but was much drier, with the cars lapping five seconds faster than they had been in the morning. Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso set the fastest time of the weekend so far on the supersoft tyre: 1:14.818 – half a second faster than the equivalent time last year. Friday’s most consistent driver was Grosjean, who was third-quickest in both sessions.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery said: “The rain in the morning meant that the drivers didn’t really get to assess the new construction of the rear as thoroughly as they would have liked to, but initial feedback has been positive. We’ll be analysing a lot more data about this new construction over the next few days before drawing a final conclusion, but we don’t expect this to be a massive change. It’s only a minor alteration to ensure that none of the previous delaminations – which do not impact on safety – recur, and it doesn’t affect the fundamental characteristics, performance or durability of the tyre. 

“Canada is always one of the most challenging circuits for the tyres, because of the layout of the track and also the heavy braking, which puts plenty of heat into them. Conditions today could well be representative of what we have in the race, with around 17 degrees ambient and track temperature, and we’ve seen good durability and performance from both compounds so far – with little graining despite the cool temperatures. It’s hard to make a prediction about the number of pit stops at this point because the track is still very green and there are so many variables here, but we’ve seen some long runs from the supersoft in practice with no significant drop-off in performance, so this certainly looks set to be the tyre to qualify on tomorrow.”

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