Mercedes should have paid tyre penalty

So after the tyre failures at Spa, the drivers berated Pirelli to such an extent that the powers that be (ie Bernie Ecclestone) had to take them into a dark room and explain the facts of life.

Basically, he said, "without tyres, you guys are out of a job, so keep it zipped".

Pirelli invested a lot of time and effort to find the reason for the failure Sebastian Vettel suffered at Spa. This is like sifting through the bits and pieces left over from a plane crash, when it can take years to identify the cause of the failure.

But Pirelli had only a few days. All it could do is look at all of the available information at that point in time.

Pirelli's answer was that it suffered more tyre cuts at Spa than normal and that the teams were running outside of the tyre engineers' design brief.

The further you run the tyre, the thinner the tread gets. This increases the likelihood that one of those cuts will go through the tyre, resulting in a deflation. Whether it's a slow deflation or an instant one is out of their hands.

Pre-Monza, Pirelli and the FIA issued a technical directive that the minimum tyre pressures used at Monza were to be 21psi at the front and 19.5psi at the rear, with a maximum tyre temperature of 110C.

To explain a little about tyres, the higher the pressure, the stiffer the tyre. Because of braking and corner entry - which puts a very high load on the front tyres - you normally want the front end to be at reasonably high pressure.

Vettel slammed Pirelli at Spa, as what remained of his tyre left the circuit © XPB

But high pressure means less track-surface compliance, so in effect less grip.

As far as the rear is concerned, you need the tyre to be at a high enough pressure to give stability. But it also needs to be low enough to give as big a tyre-to-ground contact patch as possible - this is vital for traction.

The temperature and the pressure go hand-in-hand, and that is why Pirelli states a maximum of 110C.

Some teams have been heating the tyres higher than this to get better grip when the car leaves the pits.

It's mainly the fronts that this is done to, as it momentarily improves the balance and allows the driver to work the whole car better - especially on a qualifying lap.

With the higher temperature, there will be an increase in tyre pressure, but when the car goes out on the circuit, the tyre temperature will drop and, in turn, the pressure will be too low.

This can overwork the shoulder of the tyre. Basically, this area of the tyre has to flex, but flex it too much or for too long and it will fail.

Heating the tyres to more than 110C is a bit silly anyway. In my experience, anything above 80C compromised the compound grip level.

It might give you a slightly better balance when you leave the pits, but basically it cooked the tyre tread and made it like a harder compound.

Following Pirelli's investigation, all F1 teams were handed tyre directives for Monza © XPB

In my day we would have started free practice at a track like Monza aiming to run the tyres at a hot pressure of 20psi front and 18psi rear, and then adjusted them around that pressure depending on the car's handling characteristics.

If the turn-in to the corner is too pointy, add half a psi to the front. If traction is poor, increase rear tyre pressure by the same amount.

For a circuit like Hungary, 20psi front and 16psi rear would be a good starting point because of the traction required in the low-speed corners and the fact there are no real high-speed turns.

So, from my point of view, when it was discovered before the race that on the grid both Mercedes were running with lower-than-permitted tyre pressures, it should have been reacted to immediately.

Everyone in the pitlane will know that when the cars came around onto the grid, those tyre pressures would have been lower again.

Williams should've faced a harsher penalty for Bottas's Spa mix-up, says Anderson © LAT

I also believe that this is what should have been done Spa, when the Williams team fitted Valtteri Bottas's car with three tyres of one compound and one of the other.

He received a penalty, but was still able to complete the stint with the mismatched set.



While I'm on about the regulations and their stupidity, I might as well continue. What really annoys me are these stupid engine penalties - and actually penalties in general.

Making drivers pay the price with grid penalties just serves to destroy the racing. The public wants to see good qualifying sessions and racing; for drivers to suffer 50-place grid penalties is absolutely absurd.

I am all for cost control, but there must be a better way to achieve this. If something is not done about this soon, the current engine manufacturers, which are desperately needed in F1, will soon run off with their tails between their legs.

If I were an engine manufacturer thinking about coming into F1, I would run a mile.



The first thing I would do is make the usage of engines for the season realistic. Four is just not enough - something like six would be a lot better.



As for the tokens, each engine manufacturer needs the opportunity to be competitive. Yes, it's their own fault if they're not, but as I said above we want good racing on a Sunday afternoon.

Both Renault and Honda have endured a terrible year, with limited hope ahead © LAT

I suggested a while ago having an engine manufacturers' championship, and depending on that you allocate tokens for development. So as it stands now for 2016, Mercedes would get none and Honda would get a bunch, with Renault somewhere in the middle.



You should also be allowed to spend more tokens than you have allocated - but you have to pay the price.



If you need more than your six allocated engines, or you make a conscious decision to spend more tokens than you actually have, you pay the price in constructors' championship points.

This, in turn, is potentially cash revenue. The points price per engine or token would have to be high, but you need to hit the teams where it hurts.



If you don't have any points, then you go into a deficit for when you score some. And if you end up not scoring any, then it doesn't matter anyway.



Doing it this way means that it's more or less invisible to the viewer and spectator. Yes, the enthusiast will know, but I'm sure they would also like to see all 20 drivers competing as best they can every weekend.



At least this way every driver can go racing on a Sunday afternoon from their qualifying position.

What we have now, with drivers not bothering to run on a Saturday and starting at the back on Sunday, has gone on for too long.