Three reasons why F1 should avoid the durable tyres route after dull Italian GP

A comment appeared the other day under one of our stories – yes, we see you – bemoaning the current state of F1, as was their prerogative, and much of it was fair. But there was one suggestion that I disagreed with: the idea of having tyres that a) last a race distance, and b) that drivers “can push on”.

The arguments for durable tyres are that this would return F1 to an era of perceived purity, where drivers did not have to worry about ‘management’ of tyres and were freed up to drive very quickly. In theory, you’d have more drivers pushing each other into making mistakes, and any positional gains would be hard-earned and feel more valuable than the dime-a-dozen passes you get with DRS.

But that’s only the theory; the reality is actually rather turgid. Deleting any impact from tyre management or wear completely saps F1 of one of its key components: a strategic undercurrent. This was a situation perfectly encapsulated by last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, where a complete lack of tyre degradation made the race a bland, one-dimensional affair.

It was the same in Japan. Although the race was marginally less of a foregone conclusion as Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were all largely in the same postcode, the lack of tyre wear kept them all relatively spaced out and without any means to actually battle for the lead.

While the efforts over the past 15 years to make tyres that wear at different rates are undoubtedly a contrivance, it is a necessary one. Different strategic options make a race inherently more interesting. Variety, such as when there are three or four different theories of how best to approach a race, is the spice of life. And the intrigue around that rarely reaches a denouement after just four laps of a grand prix.

When there’s a one-stop strategy, and the medium tyre can last far beyond the predicted 30-lap crossover, the drivers with no hope of points go long and goal-hang for a safety car. That doesn’t really feel like racing.

There are three points that should define the key issues at play with durable, push-able tyres.

Stroll and Ocon, despite their mid-race scuffle, were two of the goal-hanging drivers hoping for a late safety car to gain a cheap pitstop

Photo by: James Sutton / LAT Images via Getty Images

No degradation means cars likely to finish in qualifying order

We already have a session dedicated to letting drivers push their cars to the limit: qualifying. Qualifying rewards those who can, ultimately, develop the outright quickest car in a given scenario. Races, meanwhile, should be about who can develop the best all-rounder; when there is a grid set by one parameter (outright speed), then the different stages of a race should start to reward the other parameters: reliability, consistency and, yes, management of tyres through a stint.

Deleting the latter point significantly reduces the variance experienced in a race, and that’s even before one starts discussing strategy. All the cars today are reliable and consistent; you might start to influence those variables a little bit more if durable tyres result in drivers going more quickly, but if a harder tyre has been produced to enable that, then the net pace change won't be so vast.

As such, the situation would be that the cars largely finish in qualifying order. If the fastest cars qualify at the front, how do the cars behind actually catch up? The per-lap difference between Verstappen's Red Bull and Norris' McLaren was about 0.2-0.3s at Monza, and there was probably a similar delta between the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc and the Mercedes of George Russell. If this is repeatable throughout the race, given zero degradation effect, it only serves to widen the gaps between drivers.

No strategic undercurrent to atone for bad visual spectacle

Let’s take last year’s Monza race, by comparison. The bit that made it exciting was the variation in strategy; McLaren opted for the standard-issue two-stop during the race and, although Ferrari looked like it was set to do the same, it made the transition to a one-stop.

Knife-edge strategies are the absolute king in offering races variance. One stop, or two? Two stops, or three? That way, a team can either be rewarded for the bravery of an all-out attack, or for a more conservative strategy made manifest by incredible driver/car brilliance

There was a palpable uncertainty whether Leclerc would stop again. When you take the on-screen spectacle out of context, the actual racing itself wasn’t all that special – the intrigue lay in the battle of wits. When the penny dropped that Leclerc wasn’t going to call at his box again, the interest switched from the anticipation of Leclerc’s pit strategy to the anticipation of Piastri attempting to catch him. The Australian couldn’t make that happen, but the key sense that people had felt in this battle was made possible by the lack of inevitability.

When Verstappen took the lead on lap four of this year’s race, there was inevitability, and almost-certainty, that he would win. That’s not Verstappen’s fault; his drive was faultless. But he couldn’t be pushed, because there were no variables allowing that to happen. McLaren had few strategic options to fight Verstappen with, because there were only different colours of the same one-stop. The outright fastest strategy was probably to pit around lap 30, put the hards on, and just push to the end. But that wasn’t going to win the race either.

It’s not just about battles for victory; this permeates through the field. Those who qualify down the order should still have an opportunity for points, and should be free to outfox rivals on the pitwall to make that happen. And while some may argue the point “well, then they should have qualified better”, that’s all well and good, but it’s just not very interesting.

This year's Italian GP was a guaranteed one-stopper, meaning little variation for teams to use strategy as a weapon in the race

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

It does feel that I’m very much singling out Verstappen wins here, but that’s because two evenly-matched McLaren drivers fighting for a win is a more compelling watch than Verstappen’s unchallenged wins. Of course, they’d be a lot more interesting if Verstappen actually had a team-mate capable of challenging him, and Red Bull operated with McLaren’s free-strategy calls. I don’t care who’s fighting for a win, as long as there is a fight to become absorbed in.

Knife-edge strategies are the absolute king in offering races variance. One stop, or two? Two stops, or three? That way, a team can either be rewarded for the bravery of an all-out attack, or for a more conservative strategy made manifest by incredible driver/car brilliance. The days of four stops were perhaps excessive, as Pirelli was coerced into making tyres that resembled a hot, gooey camembert, but the varied race-tyre management that year made the championship very unpredictable... at least, until after the summer.

Drivers aren’t tested by durable tyres

This is a touch more anecdotal, but bear with me. The best drivers are those who were all-rounders, and had their moments of individual brilliance underpinned by excellent management or mechanical sympathy of their cars. Alain Prost, for example, was feted for his big-picture view of a race, as was Michael Schumacher – in perhaps the opposite way. Some of Schumacher’s best wins involved stopping more than his rivals, and using up the tyres throughout the stint to make the difference – almost anti-management, in some cases.

In the 1998 Hungary race, for example, Schumacher made a three-stopper work while the McLarens went for two. In 2004’s French Grand Prix, Schumacher went for an all-out four-stopper to beat Fernando Alonso. These wins were made by the possibility of strategic variance and two different approaches from drivers, and gave Schumacher a chance to flex his muscles.

PLUS: Michael Schumacher's top 10 F1 victories

Just as there are those examples where a driver can throw caution to the wind, Leclerc’s win at Monza last year is an alternative example where less is more, so long as the driver can manage the tyres a little bit. Alternatively, look at Verstappen’s first F1 win at Barcelona in 2016, where he made a two-stopper work while under heavy pressure from Kimi Raikkonen. The two diverged from the three-stoppers of Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo, which had formed the initial battle for victory before it became clear that, if the two stoppers did a bit of management, they could fight to the end.

Tyre management seems to be conflated with a slow lift-and-coast approach, but that completely under-represents the challenge that drivers face. Anyone can manage tyres slowly; the trick is to do it without losing any pace.

Verstappen's first F1 victory required tyre management - something his 66th grand prix victory didn't

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

It’s not quite an equivalent scenario, but it underlines the point; one of Scott Dixon’s key strengths as an IndyCar force was in his fuel management skill. The Kiwi could be given incredibly tough targets to reach, and yet his career was defined by fuel-mileage drives where he was quick and efficient to confound his rivals.

You can’t necessarily stop one-stop races from happening; in scenarios like Monza, where the degradation is just low, then you end up with a dull race. But if you want to make ‘tyres drivers can push on’, then it requires more mandatory stops to be interesting – which rather maintains artificial elements, but in a different manner.

There are those who bemoan the lack of interest in races, simultaneously bemoaning the lack of ‘purity’. But the two standpoints are often mutually exclusive, unfortunately. And thus it’s down to choice: an exciting race with a few contrivances, or a dull one that retains the requisite purity. I think I’m picking the former, because I’m not a monk.

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Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images