Pirelli reveal new plan of action after key regulation U-Turn agreed

Sam Cooper 28 Aug 2023 9:00 PM

Pirelli have had to quickly come up with a Plan B when it comes to testing after an F1 Commission meeting changed a rule for 2024.

Next season was set to be the first in which tyre blankets were banned as Formula 1 looks to go greener but push back from the drivers came almost as soon as the plan was announced.

Pirelli did run tests without blankets during the season but the F1 Commission still voted to allow the blankets to remain in place for 2024 at least.

Alpine and Red Bull get set for next round of Pirelli tyre testing

The knock-on effect of this change was it meant every test up until now done by Pirelli was much less useful than it once was as the tyres will now be heated using the blankets.

As a result, Pirelli have had to rethink their testing strategy for the rest of the year as they work to prepare the optimum tyre for 2024.

“We know the cars have continuous development,” Pirelli F1 chief engineer Simone Berra said.

“It’s important to continuously improve the reliability and the fatigue resistance of the tyre, and the resistance to the standing wave, because of the loads.

“我们也想改善当前的范围啊f compounds, working mainly on the compounds that showed a little bit less performance than expected.”

Alpine and Red Bull are next on the testing schedule, sticking around in Monza for some more laps after this weekend’s grand prix, and Berra said they have already made some changes from the previous rounds of testing.

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“The teams uploaded the simulations at the end of June,” Berra said. “So we had the time, a couple of months, to process all the data, and to understand what the destination is in terms of load for next year. And we have seen some increase.

“We are continuing to include new materials, new structure, geometry. So we are working as much as possible.

“Obviously, there is a limit at some point, and you have to change philosophy, but for the moment we have seen good results working on the current structure, and improving with different new solutions.

“We are working on the sidewalls, we are working on the bead areas, we are working together with our R&D team to improve as much as possible the structure.”