Pirelli confirm F1’s idea of bringing back 2011 type degradation tyres

The super durable Pirelli tyres have made F1  a little boring from the strategic point of view, as drivers and teams generally go through the race with just a one-stop strategy.

Tyre management has also become a massive factor, sometimes not allowing drivers to go all out for that overtake that they earlier could have.

FIA now wants tyre degradation to be significantly higher than what it is currently and have mentioned it in the tender released for potential tyre suppliers for the 2020-23 period.

Pirelli’s sporting director Mario Isola revealed this in a recent interview with Racefans, confirming that the changes would effectively bring back the tyre situation from 2011.

“We are analysing the numbers for degradation,” said Isola.

“They’re quite high.

“That’s why before replying we are, with the guys in Milan, trying to make some simulations to understand what we achieve with these numbers. They are probably not far from 2011, 2012. We are making the comparisons to understand.” he added.

However, Isola still feels that tyre management could help reduce degradation, but the degradation would be significantly greater than what it is presently.

“Pure degradation [is one thing], a different thing is degradation during the race. Because during the race, the teams have it in all their interests to manage degradation and reduce it without reducing too much the pace in order to achieve the best result. They are in competition, so they have to do that.

“So we need to put on the table all these aspects to understand which is the final result. Because of all these numbers, it’s not very easy to predict that without support from the numbers.” Isola said.

The initial few steps have been taken in order to make F1 more interesting for fans than it presently is.

Next step for FIA and Liberty Media; work on improving overtaking.