Red Bull driver Mark Webber says he is completely at home with the Pirelli tyres – Formula 1 news
Red Bull driver Mark Webber says he has mastered racing on the Pirelli tyres.
Pirelli took over from Bridgestone for 2011 season and has been praised for the pace and competitiveness it has brought into Formula 1. Some drivers naturally had trouble adjusting to the new tyres while others mastered it early.
Webber found it difficult to cope with the new tyres early on in the 2011 season, but improved with every race under his belt. He has now said that he is completely at home with the Pirelli tyres and sees the 2011 season as a good learning curve for the
2012 season. He also praised the Pirelli compounds and said that it has brought better pace and made overtaking easier as the tyres have more grip to them and that is good for competitiveness.
Webber’s teammate Sebastian Vettel though did not have any trouble adjusting to the new tyres and dominated the season with 11 victories. Webber now is looking to show the same dominance as he prepares for the 2012 season. Although Pirelli is looking to
tweak the compounds for 2012 and gave a sneak peak during the Friday practice sessions at the latter part of the 2011 season.
“We had some better weekends, we started to get KERS working and I was having to make less pit stops - that was a big thing,” he said.
“Obviously I was having to do a lot of [wheel-to-wheel] racing by making more stops, which put me more at risk. As the season went on I tended to be on the same strategy as everyone else and that made the racing easier for me,” he further added.
It will be interesting to see how Webber performs in 2012 as he looks to outperform his team-mate Vettel. Other teams have also been tipped to be much more competitive with their updated cars. Especially McLaren who in the latter part of the season performed
very well with Jenson Button finishing 2nd place on the drivers’ championship standing. Lewis Hamilton who had a torrid season also picked up pace at the end of the season.
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