Pirelli unsure more aggressive tyre choice would have helped show in Valencia
Pirelli believes that even a more aggressive choice of tyres for the European Grand Prix may not have been enough to help make the Valencia race a thriller
The Italian tyre manufacturer elected to bring its more conservative medium compound this weekend because it wanted to run it in race conditions before the British GP - and the easier time that drivers had with tyre degradation helped contribute to a less exciting race that has been the case at other events this year.
Although Pirelli's director of motorsport Paul Hembery thinks a super soft/soft choice may well have improved matters slightly, he thinks it would not have been enough to deliver a huge spectacle.
"What we saw in GP2 and GP3 was that there was a lot of the overtaking under braking, and there are not that many places to overtake here," Hembery told AUTOSPORT.
"But the F1 cars have extremely good braking, so we lost that little opportunity.
"From our point of view probably the conservative choice of medium did not help. If we had gone the super soft route - it would not have worked tremendously well here because it is far too hot for it - but people would have had to use it in qualifying and, if they had just got eight laps out of it, it would have pushed people harder on the soft, perhaps to the limit.
"They would only have needed a couple more laps out of each set on the soft, but some might have done it, some might have not and that might have brought into play a little bit more the performance difference of the cars as the tyres degraded more.
"We have seen that maybe we could have assisted - but I am not sure of that of course because we didn't see the DRS working in many places. It is one for all of us to look back on - we need to look back and see what we could do.
"Having the super soft may well have created a slightly more interesting race, but I have doubts with the overtaking zones that it would not have changed a huge amount. It certainly would not have been as exciting as some of the other races we have seen."
Hembery insisted, however, that there was no need for F1 to worry about the tyre situation simply because one race had not been tremendously exciting.
"I guess we were all a bit bored because we have been so used to so much excitement this year. We get a race that is relatively straightforward and we start worrying, but we are going now to Silverstone which is a step back to the other extreme. It is a high-speed aggressive circuit."
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