How to Be an F1 Driver_My Guide to Life in the Fast Lane by Jenson Button

Author:Jenson Button [Button, Jenson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
Goodreads: 51728241
Publisher: Blink Publishing
Published: 2019-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

7. TYRES

Question: what do racing divers think and talk about more than anything else? Yes, it’s tyres. And that goes for any class of racing, but especially Formula One. Are we talking about how much we love the tyres? How great they are? No, we’re not. We’re complaining about the tyres.

In F1 it used to be the case that we had Bridgestone and Michelin who were in competition with each other, meaning that some teams were on Bridgestone and some teams were on Michelin, which meant that the two manufacturers worked night and day to make better tyres, each of them trying to outdo the other, and because of this healthy competition they came up with softer, better, more consistent tyres. It was awesome.

Old timers like me can remember all the way back to 2004, which was a great year for tyre wars, so the cars were super quick and there was very little degradation of the tyres. They were great tyres because the manufacturers were fighting each other.

Nowadays – not so good. Since 2011 Pirelli has been the sole supplier of tyres for F1 – and because there’s no competition, there has, in my opinion, not been such an emphasis on development, and the tyres have arguably not been as good. Whatever the reason, I think that every driver in F1 has a whinge about the Pirelli tyres.

The problem is that nobody really understands them. We don’t get why sometimes you can get it in the temperature working range and it feels good while at other times it just doesn’t work. One race, the temperature for the tyres should be x, and in that range it’s really good. You go to the next race and in that range, they just don’t work.

As a result the tyres we have now are probably two to two-and-a-half seconds slower than we had back in the golden age of 2004.

In Super GT, we have four tyre manufacturers: Yokohama, Dunlop, Michelin and Bridgestone, which is great. They’re all trying to outdo each other so you go testing and it’s just non-stop tyres all weekend long. You’ve got brand-new tyres literally being flung at you the whole time (not literally, that would hurt, but you know what I mean) and it’s great; you’re testing 12 different types of Bridgestone all of differing construction. This one’s a bit softer. This one’s a bit stiffer. This one has a different tread pattern. This one plays a happy tune.

I love all that. Given that much choice you can really tailor your tyres to your specific needs, while the chances are you’ll be on completely different tyres from your competitor. Plus it’s just great fun trying out all these new sets of tyres – until you get to the end of testing and they want your feedback, that is. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? It’s like twelve sets of tyres, how am I supposed to remember all of them?’

But even if we’re not complaining about tyres, then we’re talking about them: what tyres to use, how warm they are.

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