Benetton wrote:Pirelli changing the construction of the compounds is just wrong. The Lotus is designed with THESE tires in mind! You can't change the rules in the middle of the season just because they make 4 pit stops! bathplug all who have complained about the tires! Red Bullshit!
I would have to say that, to a certain extent, the question of changing the tyres is a little more ambiguous. Now, it cannot be denied that Red Bull are likely to profit considerably, although another outfit that may well benefit even more from the changes would be McLaren (there are suggestions that some of their problems come from them underestimating the stiffness of the sidewalls); that political pressure has set a rather damaging precedent and has provoked angry responses from both Lotus and Ferrari, especially the latter:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2013/05/17/f ... es-change/These are difficult times for people with poor memories. Maybe it’s because of the huge amount of information available today that people are too quick to talk, forgetting things that happened pretty much in the recent past. Or maybe the brain cells that control memory only operate selectively, depending on the results achieved on track by their owners.
[...]Today however, it seems one must almost feel ashamed for choosing a strategy that, as always for that matter, is aimed at getting the most out of the package one has available.
On the other hand, it has to be said that the nature of the way in which the tyres have failed this season does raise a few questions and, to a certain extent, provide justification for changes to be made on safety grounds. The problem is, it seems that this issue is inherently embedded into the construction of the tyres (the use of a more flexible tyre wall causing increased deformations and heating of the tyres, increasing the risk of delamination), so in addressing that issue they were always likely to move towards something closer to their 2012 tyres, something likely to appease Red Bull but potentially irritate others. It's also fair to say that, were it the case that Ferrari were in trouble instead, I imagine that we'd hear some bitter criticism from their quarter too - though whether they'd be applying as much political pressure as Mateschitz has been reportedly putting on Bernie is open to debate.
It's a difficult situation for Pirelli, and I do feel sorry for them - Red Bull's complaints, whilst cynically self interested and disruptive to the sport, do have an element of truth in them, and the way in which the press complaints have been whipped into an appropriate state of outrage by a combination of interested parties and the type of bitter older fan that wails about how the sport was always better in some rose tinted vision of the past has really started to hurt them.
