Newey explains the controversy with Pirelli

This weekend, the teams and their engineers were very tense before the start of the race, as concerns about the lifespan of the soft tires used in qualifying had emerged: « After qualifying, we were approached by a team that had some ideas and concerns. We then analyzed the situation with all the other cars » explains Paul Hembery, head of competition at Pirelli.

At the origin of this concern, the appearance of blisters on the front tires of some cars that participated in Q3: « In the evening, we brought in additional tires to give us the opportunity to change the front tires if the problem appeared for all the teams but, following our investigation on Sunday morning, we saw that this was not the case. We discussed it with all the teams that participated in Q3 and the majority agreed to stick to the regulations [editor’s note: the top ten qualifiers use their qualifying tires at the start of the race]. This was also the FIA’s viewpoint. »

It turns out now that the team in question was Red Bull, which allegedly did not comply with Pirelli’s recommendations not to exceed a camber angle (note: inclination of the vertical axis of the wheels) of more than 4° on the front axle: « There was quite a good correlation between camber and the degree of blistering » explains, in his defense, Paul Hembery.

Asked by journalist Tony Dodgins, Adrian Newey assured that his two RB7s only slightly exceeded Pirelli’s recommendations: « We were just a hair above the 4° angle, 4.1° or something close to that. But obviously, if we had known there were safety issues, we wouldn’t have exceeded them. We had a discussion with Pirelli, they were fully aware that we were slightly above and it didn’t seem to worry them. »

Indeed, Paul Hembery assures that under no circumstances was driver safety at risk: « Graining and blistering are inherent to competition tires. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon, but there are limits. Ordinarily, during free practice, when you see something like that, teams change their settings and don’t race in that situation, so it was a combination of circumstances. […] If someone had asked me if it was a safety issue, I would have said no, not at all. And was it a performance issue? Definitely yes! »

However, on Adrian Newey’s side, the concern was indeed more about safety considerations than performance: « Racing tires have been blistering since the 1960s, but that is not the problem. The issue was the integrity of the structure because the blisters were so close to the shoulder of the tire where the tread meets the inner sidewalls of the tire. At 5 PM on Saturday, Pirelli could not say whether they would last half a lap or five laps, but […] they estimated that a failure was imminent on both cars » he explains, not hesitating to draw a comparison with the problem Michelin encountered at Indianapolis in 2005.

Faced with the FIA’s refusal to allow drivers who qualified in Q3 to put on new tires for the start, Red Bull had few alternatives as Adrian Newey confides: « We had to choose between reducing the camber angle under Parc Fermé conditions and therefore starting from the pit lane, or making the changes we could, mainly by increasing the pressure in the front tires and doing a very limited number of laps on the first set. We opted for the latter solution, as the FIA did not want to take into account the damage to our tires and allow us to change them for the start. »

For Paul Hembery, the decision by Pirelli and the FIA was primarily driven by the desire not to create a precedent and not to favor one team over another: « In the end, what should we do? Should we allow tire changes and create a precedent? Should we authorize what would be seen as preferential treatment towards a team, especially with the final result? I think today, in this case, you would have asked me instead why we helped Red Bull win the race. »

In any case, the designer of the RB7 acknowledges that it was a very difficult decision to start from the pit lane or not and assures that it was not the responsibility of the drivers: I don’t think we can do that. I made the decision to make some changes and start with higher tire pressure to try to make them safer, even at the cost of suffering from a lack of performance. Then, we decided to make a very short first stint on the qualifying tires, which is why we pitted so early. Mark’s tires were more damaged than Seb’s, which is why they pitted on laps 3 and 5 respectively.

And the British engineer added that not having to use the DRS at the start of the race and when Vettel was in the lead had helped to control the phenomenon: « Not using the DRS helped us because the damage caused is a function of speed and load. When you activate the DRS, the load at the front does not change, only the rear loses aerodynamic load and you go much faster. We performed some internal calculations that we combined with the results Pirelli gave us on how an increase in tire pressure would help their lifespan. To be honest, it wasn’t a very comfortable position given the absence of the DRS and the extra pressure in the front tires. I must say it’s one of the scariest races I’ve been involved in: my heart was in my mouth. Because, first and foremost, our duty is the driver’s safety, and we try to make this decision thinking about making the car safer without excessively handicapping it from a performance point of view. Frankly, at the finish, I was just relieved. »

This did not prevent the Austrian team from returning to victory after three winless Grand Prix and achieving a double, even though Adrian Newey himself struggles to gauge the impact, on performance, of the compromise they had to adopt to preserve the tires: « It’s hard to know, but it handicapped us. »

The British engineer takes the opportunity to commend the performance of his drivers: “We were trying to preserve the tires as much as possible, and it was a very mature race from both of them. Mark’s race was just as good as Seb’s,” he comments before highlighting the “courage” shown by the Australian in overtaking Fernando Alonso at the foot of Eau Rouge.

For his part, Paul Hembery stated on Sunday evening that in the future Pirelli would be more conservative with its recommendations, especially in a place like Monza.