Paul Hembery believes 2013 Pirelli tyres might change pecking order – Formula 1 news
Pirelli’s motorsport director, Paul Hembery, believes that their new tyres for the 2013 F1 season might be changing the pecking order.
“The tyres next year will be different from those used this year. The walls flex a little more, which will have a significant influence on the aerodynamic performance,” Hembery said. “I don’t think the next championship will necessarily be anything like
how it finished this year. I think there will be teams who will look deeply into this feature of our new tyres. I am sure they are racking their brains as to how it affects, for example, the suspension. We saw in testing how the tyres changed the behaviour
of the cars.”
Pirelli had also introduced new tyres in the beginning of the 2012 F1 season which made the first seven races very unpredictable and seven different drivers were witnessed winning them. Hembery has already stated earlier that the new tyres for 2013 are different
in terms of construction and compounds. He had also added that unlike 2012 there are not going to be any major technical changes in the cars so while the aerodynamics will be affected; drivers should not be expecting huge surprises.
In order to help the teams gather some information on the new tyres, Pirelli had provided them with the prototypes during the Friday practice session before the last race in Brazil.
Meanwhile, Mercedes team principal, Ross Brawn, said that the F1 teams are now expert enough to avoid difficulties with new tyres. He said that unlike this year, the teams will be much better supported to deal with the effects of the new tyres and the chances
of the difficulties might be reduced but not completely eliminated.
On the other hand, sporting director for McLaren, Sam Michael, has said that he does not want Pirelli to go very conservative for their tyre selection in 2013 keeping in mind the problems of 2012. He said that the unpredictability of F1 makes it more exciting.
He added that he never had any issues with unpredictable effects of the new tyres; in fact he thought it was good.
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