Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Pirelli wary of impact of aero gains

Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery says the tyre manufacturer is monitoring the aerodynamic gains which could be seen in 2016.

With the introduction of the 1.6-litre V6 turbo engines in 2014, one of Pirelli's main points of focus became the rear tyres due to the amount of torque delivered by the new power units. Now two years in to the new regulations, Hembery says attention is switching back to aerodynamic advancements and their impact on tyre performance.

“Of course [it has a big impact] because the loading going in to the tyres and the tyre history is based on the amount of loading going in to the tyre by the number of laps essentially," Hembery told F1i.

"So the longer stints that we’ve been having going down to [at the end of 2015] with more one-stops in a number of races instead of two or three means that the loads the tyres are having to take over the race distance are much higher invariably than in the previous seasons."

And Hembery says Pirelli still hopes to be able to limit the tyre life in terms of performance in order to increase the number of pit stops required in 2016.

“We are trying to recreate a cliff … the concept is there to try and create a cliff that will come in at 15-18 laps and will get us back to the two and three stops that we’ve moved away a little bit from.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.