KEEPING A CLOSE WATCH ON TYRE TEMPERATURES
While the new Pirellis are more durable (they no longer suffer from heat degradation), it has also become more difficult to bring and keep the revised compounds into the right temperature window
2017-spec chassis have also had an impact on tyre exploitation, as the new cars are quite sensitive to balance changes (oversteer, understeer).
“The sensitivity of everything seems to be amplified by the fact that the cars are quicker. Small changes make big differences,” Toro Rosso technical director James Key told in pre-season testing at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
“Cars are more sensitive to changes, things are quite amplified with these cars : tyres are more sensitive to tyre parameters (angle to the road, etc.).”
The impact of car balance on tyre exploitation is more visible in race trim than in qualifying since prolonged oversteer or understeer will end up taking the tyre out of the optimum window.
Hence the growing importance of monitoring tyre thread temperatures this year. This shows how the tyre behaves from one corner to another and enables engineers to study tyre deformation depending on suspension setup.
Infrared sensors lodged in the rear view mirrors or the front wing are measuring the superficial tyre temperatures at the front (see white arrows above and below). At the rear, the sensors are placed in the floor, underneath a bulge (see red arrows on the pictures above). The data collected is directly fed back to the team’s garage via telemetry.
