Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

High tyre pressures target teams pushing boundaries

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Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery says the high tyre pressures seen at the Chinese Grand Prix were necessary due to certain teams finding ways of starting the race much lower.

The tyre pressures were greatly increased from 2015 to 2016 in China, with Romain Grosjean complaining that the guidelines were "absolutely ridiculous" and Jenson Button describing the change as "massive". Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery explained the main reason for such a difference is because some teams were almost able to negate the change by the time the race started.

“Well to be honest it’s a complex area because they were talking about pressures and starting pressures is what we’re interested in," Hembery told F1i. "Whilst you’re in free practice they may be running a certain level of pressures that we’ve seen that some teams were able to start the race with quite minimal increases over what we’ve been using last year.

"Unfortunately if others haven’t found a way of doing that then I can understand for them maybe it is not so easy.”

And Grosjean himself admits Haas was one of the teams to struggle with the pressures more than most.

Asked by F1i if he spoke to Pirelli after his comments in China, Grosjean replied: "I did and they explained to me that the load is high and they have to put high tyre pressures but it’s kind of none of my business.

"I would like to run proper tyre pressures. So it was very good that we had the discussions. They know that their tyre is not good enough but we know that there is no testing so it is very difficult for them. In the race I think it was quite hard for everyone, the degradation was quite big, so not ideal.

“I think Jenson had the same opinion as me on Friday. Frustration got the better of me a bit on Friday and I don’t want to blame Pirelli for anything. Again, they don’t have any testing so how can they improve their product? So I think that’s why we’re not too talkative about it. Some people did a better job than we did within the constraints.”

Scene at the Chinese Grand Prix

Chinese Grand Prix - Quotes of the week

F1i's Driver rating - Shanghai

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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.