Pirelli's big challenge post-2012

As far as stock-take sessions go, Pirelli's return to Abu Dhabi precisely a year after the company unveiled the products designed to take Formula 1 through the 2011 season - the first in a three-year sole-supplier contract secured after Bridgestone's withdrawal from the sport - the tyre company's media camp at the Yas Marina circuit was pretty successful.

In its first season since withdrawing from F1 exactly 20 years earlier, Pirelli did both itself and F1 proud, supplying a total of 34,000 tyre units to 12 teams - of which 24,000 were actually used. Remarkably, the sport suffered not a single quality-related tyre failure despite the grid covering over 180,000 miles during race weekends and testing.

Pirelli's 2012 F1 tyres were launched this week in the UAE

The company came in at short notice after the supply contract was formally granted in June 2010 off the back of a tacit brief to 'spice up' the show by supplying rubber with rapid, but controlled degradation. That Pirelli delivered is proven by a single statistic: in the 19 races the teams made 1111 pit lane visits, of which just 26 were penalty-related.

It is a truism in F1 that incoming teams face tougher second seasons than their maiden years, and so it is for tyre companies. During sophomore seasons tolerance is understandably in short supply. When the bar has been nudged as high as Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery and his team managed in 2011, that task is all the more difficult.

Hembery and his cohorts face additional challenges: for 18 months they had access to Toyota's TF109 - complete with a technical support team - as a test mule. However, not only is that car's technology now obsolete (and the car relegated to museum duty), but its small tanks (due to refuelling regulations in place at the time) leave Pirelli unable to run full race-distance simulations.

"We have some suggestions of re-modifying, again, the Toyota, but in reality the work we did last year with the modified Toyota took us down, maybe, a path that wasn't quite what we wanted," Hembery told this column in Yas Marina's space-aged surrounds.

"When we added downforce we changed the balance of the car, and lost a lot in straight-line speed, so it wasn't ideal. Ideally we would like at least a 2010 car. Getting a 2011 car would create too many issues, but what we really need is a clear description of what we're going to do, and I think we've given ample opportunity for everyone to come up with the solution."

Thus the classic bus-stop dilemma: Everybody recognises a street needs a bus stop, but no one wants it outside their home; equally, no team wishes to see a competitor gain advantage through feedback during tests...

"It's been going on for 18 months now, and while we don't particularly want to give an advantage to any particular team, we need to do our work. We've proposed what we feel were reasonable solutions to allow sporting equity, but unless there's a big change we will have to come up with our own solutions," added Hembery, who came into motorsport through a boyhood love of rallying.

Pirelli has used a 2009-spec Toyota for its testing so far, but now needs a new mule

"Maybe we ought to get involved with the FIA to find a regulation that allows us to stipulate how we're going to go about it." Don't rule out a test drawn by ballot among the 12 teams just yet...

Crucial to Pirelli's selection over at least two competitive bids was FOTA. The teams' alliance was then a cohesive force, but has since splintered over political and technical issues. Thus, going into Pirelli's second season, the teams are split into four utterly unequal quarters: Ferrari/Sauber; Red Bull Racing; HRT; and FOTA representing the rest.

Where once FOTA spoke with one voice - generally McLaren team principal and FOTA chairman Martin Whitmarsh - the split means that going forward Hembery faces various factions. Not insurmountable, but complicated all the same - particularly when Pirelli would prefer to focus on other issues.

"It's an interesting challenge, and teams' association or not, at the end of the day the sport must find agreement on many items they have to manage.

"Maybe that means there'd be more of a role for the FIA, maybe more of a role for [commercial rights controller] Bernie [Ecclestone], I don't know. But somebody needs to bring them together, and particularly in a sport like this where you do need consensus to explore the way forward. Otherwise you have paralysis, which is no good for anyone, and I'm speaking generally there, not just about tyres."

Given Pirelli's three-year ticket, it is no secret its existing contract expires at the end of 2013, which simultaneously and rather conveniently brings a clean break with the regulation changes after the teams bickered so long that F1's much-vaunted 'Brave New World' was delayed a year. Does Pirelli intend on staying after its initial stint? If so, is the company ready for rule changes slated to include low-profile rubber, particularly in view of the test car situation?

"Well," says Hembery without hesitation, "we certainly want to stay in the sport. If the sport wants us to stay, we would like to stay. I think there's quite a lot of discussion going on still about the 2014 regulations, so it's difficult for us to really comment. There are a few teams that have spoken about 18-inch tyres, others preferring that we stay where we are for a whole multitude of reasons, not least safety.

Paul Hembery, head of Pirelli's F1 project, says it wants to stay post-2013 © LAT

"We have to start discussions towards the end of this year, and if, as I say, all elements in the sport want us to go forward, we will. The people actively involved during an F1 weekend from the FIA have been very, very positive - all the teams have been very positive, and Bernie's been positive."

So, from a sporting perspective it is clear Pirelli wishes to remain, but what about the business case, particularly if the sport again opens the doors to the competition, causing costs to spiral?

"We need to see if it becomes dramatic, if it would still be affordable, but I don't think that it will be very dramatic, because no-one can afford to spend too much, even the Formula 1 teams," Pirelli president Marco Tronchetti Provera said in an interview in Abu Dhabi. "They are all studying how to keep control of costs. If they keep control of costs, we have to keep control of costs."

Pirelli's F1 budget has two legs: rubber hardware and marketing costs - with its yellow/red billboards being among the most prolific trackside hoardings in the sport; its hospitality programmes among the most intensive. Understandably, both exploit its involvement to the max. Should competition return, research and development costs are likely to spiral - hardly downwards - with advertising spend being reduced to fund the shortfall. Would Pirelli still remain committed to F1?

"It depends on some figures. If the balance between costs and returns is not efficient, no way," said Tronchetti.

Fair enough, but if 'yes', can Pirelli handle a switch to, say, 18-inch rims (up a massive five inches from now) with fewer than two years to go?

Cue a small laugh from Hembery, then: "There are things you can do, to a certain point. I just think as a sport it would be rather reckless to go forward like that without at least some ability to test." Reference to F1's current lack of in-season testing bar a fistful of days in May is clear.

Company president Marco Tronchetti Provera says cost control is crucial © LAT

"It would be rather daft if we all turned up at a February winter test and found some issues. I'm pretty sure we can get the integrity solved and understood quite rapidly. Simulating cars going over kerbing in particular is one area you can't underestimate - we've seen in slow-motion pictures that the cars seriously hammer onto kerbs, and one thing kerbs can do is unseat the tyre, so it depends on how the suspension absorbs the battering that's going to come through the tyre, because it will be more rigid."

"It is a romantic notion to do it, but if we do want to do it as a sport, yes we can do it, but we've got to do it in a timely, professional manner with plenty of free testing. I believe a year's fine. Even six months, we could do it. That's not an issue. It's getting a car."

But no guarantees of that...

"Without a car I think it's very ambitious, because the impact is clearly going to be there with the suspension. Without the ability to test. Maybe we could sit down with the teams and come up with a hybrid solution - take an old car and come up with something that will at least give us an idea of where we'd be, then clearly we could do it. But, as I say, turning up in February 2014 with brand new cars, completely new regs and 18-inch wheels without testing: I think that's ambitious for the sport.

"I think it won't be professional of us or as a sport to do that when the tyre takes an extremely high battering [in F1]. We've seen examples of people getting it wrong in all forms of motorsport, and it's not the image you'd want to portray as a tyre maker. So I have said to them, 'if you want to do it, that's fine, but let's plan it and do it properly'.

"Otherwise, the benefits are what? If you turn up and have issues you've destroyed any benefit you could create, as well as goodwill and possibly the spectacle. For what value? Just to say you're using 18-inch tyres in Formula 1? It's a big decision."

Hembery's colleague, Pirelli R&D Director Maurizio Boiocchi - the man ultimately charged with developing the tyres - echoes these concerns.

Sportscars already run on 18-inch rims, but this may not work in F1 © LAT

"If you see what happens when they [the cars] jump on the kerb into the corner, it's something that could make some big difficulties for the engineer designing the suspension. Today part of the job is done by the sidewalls of the tyres, and also the air volume inside the tyre," explained the Italian. Low profile mean less air, so less air suspension, and more heat.

"If you go up [in rim size] too much, this will be quite heavily reduced and in that case you can have a pressure increase with a totally different load, because the mass is very different. So I'm not sure we can imagine so low [profile] section, and I cannot imagine that making an 18-inch we go up in [external] diameter [as tyres have a major influence on open-wheeler aerodynamics]."

He concedes sportscars race on 18-inch rubber and race on many of the same (kerbed) circuits. However, he points out that their concepts and applications demand beefier [i.e. heavier] suspension components. Then, aero forces are not as extreme as with F1 cars, where the tyre sidewalls absorb loads once suspension systems have 'bottomed'. Thus he believes a switch to 18-inch rims is too extreme, with 15 or 16 being a better compromise.

However, the crux remains a lack of test car. Could Pirelli develop a totally new family of race tyres - whether 15, 16, 17 or 18-inch - without this bespoke aid. After all, if teams refuse to supply existing cars for test purposes, what chance does Pirelli have sourcing one for future regulations still being booted about at Technical Commission level?

"I believe not," Boiocchi responds immediately, "because an 18-inch tyre needs suspension and if the existing car is more or less designed with 13, we don't have any possibility to follow the ground with an 18 section tyre with existing tyres, so we have to invent something..."

Thus simulation? "Yes, we can do it by simulation," he says before adding that actual track time is vital to the verification process. In the absence of a suitable test car he believes the only alternative is a programme of group tests, with data being pooled.

Pirelli's advertising hoardings have been abundant in 2011 © LAT

"I'm sure we can discuss some additional joint test, a common test from which we can create a prototype, to collect information and find a new solution. It's beneficial for all to have this match up in a proper way."

True, but teams seldom consider benefits unless they provide a competitive advantage.

Thus it is clear that Pirelli's second year is likely to be even more challenging than its first, for not only does the company need to contend with the FOTA split at the very time it needs consensus on test issues, but it has fewer than 12 months in which to decide whether to go or stay - with the final decision hinging upon a variety of external factors, including still-to-be-agreed technical regulations and strategic decisions still to be taken by the governing body and commercial rights-holding entity - who are in conflict with each other more often than not.

In the next 12 months Pirelli is likely to discover that year one was a relative cakewalk...