McLaren-Mercedes driver Jenson Button: New Pirelli tyres should be helpful for me – Formula 1 news
McLaren’s Jenson Button recently stated that he is hoping to take advantage of the high level of degradation of the new Pirelli tyres at the first race of the 2011 Formula 1 season that is expected to take place in Australia.
It is believed that the new tyres will lead to more overtaking as compared to the 2010 Formula 1 season.
“It's very complicated: if we're doing a three-stop race and it's 60 laps long you're going to be stopping every 15 laps,” Button told the media.
Reports revealed that the International Automobile Federation (FIA) asked the new lone tyre suppliers Pirelli, to come up with compounds that degrade faster than the 2010 Bridgestones in order to resurrect the element of a race strategy in Formula 1 once
again and also increase the overtaking rate to make the sport more exhilarating and dramatic.
These new compounds would also make racing more unpredictable and since Pirelli have introduced a number of compounds each with a different performance criteria, the teams will now have to think twice before choosing the appropriate or desired tyre compounds
before heading to the track at each venue.
Nevertheless, it seems that the harder tyre compounds last for around 25 laps according to the pre-season test sessions’ results while the softs last for 15 laps only.
Button stated that the teams will have to work and plot their strategies according to the new tyres in order to take the advantage at each race and the drivers will have to preserve their tyres as much as they can in order to get the most out of them.
“The problem is everyone is going to be thinking in that same way, so they are going to be bringing it [the first pit stop] further and further forward so you could be stopping on lap nine,” Jenson stated.
He added that the teams will then have to do the rest of the race with just two stops on two sets of tyres and that is not going to last as long as the teams are expecting as a result of which the last couple of stops are going to be crucial and that is
where Button is expecting to take the advantage over the rest of his opponents.
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