Formula 1 2013 Santander British Grand Prix

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His quote implied that the "kerbs" have been raced on since 2009 without problem.

No he didn't.

"These kerbs have been in since 2009. We've had thousands and thousands of cars go over these kerbs and they have been absolutely fine,"

He is saying the kerbs have been there since 2009 and to date they've caused no problems. He doesn't imply they were used in 2009.
 
Something I thought about.

The tire that went is the one going over inside kerbs both at turn 4 and the Maggots complex.

The weight naturally goes to the outside wheels which did not fail.

Try running your finger along the smooth bit of a blade. No matter how close you get to the blade it won't cut as long as you don't turn your finger round to face the sharp edge.

With the weight on the outside the tires would be less likely to do this unless the driver got the entire tire behind the kerb. This though would likely cause sidewall damage and the sidewalls were the only bits left and didn't look damaged.

Also with a cut what is the chances of 5 tires exploading rather than just a puncture? Surely a few more would have gone all the way in and just deflated the tire.

From what I understand, the cuts caused punctures rather than instant explosion of the tyres. The drop in pressure delaminated the surface which then tore itself away from the sidewall of the tyre.

Before Britain, we saw the outer surface remove itself from the steel band, leaving the carcass intact (Bahrain). The bonding process was then revised, so the tyre gripped the steel band carcass better. Instead of stopping the delamination however, the rubber pulled the carcass away as well to the spectacular degree at Silverstone.

My thought in all of this is the thought way back to the start of the season where Pirelli stated the difference in the tyre was a softer side wall. This is where I believe the tyres are now more prone to cuts of this nature where they were not in previous years at the same circuits.
 
Had a great weekend at silverstone this year, best of all where I was staying in the woodlands campsite on the Friday I was watching a very good cover of the chain when Eddie Jordan showed up and joined in.

He then went on to make a slightly drunk and rather interesting speech about f1 and that he has learned of a new team joining,

Personally, I'm hoping for a member of the VW Group. If that is the case, my money's on Lamborghini, as Audi and Porsche are focused on Le Mans AFAIK.
 
DK
Personally, I'm hoping for a member of the VW Group. If that is the case, my money's on Lamborghini, as Audi and Porsche are focused on Le Mans AFAIK.

They were in F1 before (Lamborghini), they used to supply engines (iirc), so maybe they will make a return.
 
I can't see that happening guys, VAG is all about racing in series relevant to their road cars and as far as I can work out, none of the brands have any interest in F1.
 
Apparently the e-mail the FIA asked for from Pirelli to explain tyre failures at Silverstone "includes notes on tyres being mounted the wrong way round"...

Ruh-roh...
 
Is it even possible to mount tires the wrong way? :odd:

I thought they were designed a certain way that prevented them from being put on backwards (Like the teeth on the wheel nuts or whatever).
 
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Some teams have been running the rear wheels on opposite hubs - so the OSR wheel is on the NSR hub and vice versa. The reasons are complex but there can be a performance and/or life advantage to it.
 
Apparently the e-mail the FIA asked for from Pirelli to explain tyre failures at Silverstone "includes notes on tyres being mounted the wrong way round"...

Ruh-roh...
Seriously?

I can't see that happening guys, VAG is all about racing in series relevant to their road cars and as far as I can work out, none of the brands have any interest in F1.
Yeah, you're more than likely right.
Though i do seem to remember there being rumors, about the possibility of Porsche making a return a while back.. but with their refreshed involvement in WCC next year, (and the reason you've already stated) they've probably got no desire to be in F1.
 
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Is it even possible to mount tires the wrong way? :odd:

I thought they were designed a certain way that prevented them form being put on backwards (Like the teeth on the wheel nuts or whatever).

Putting tyres designed for the left side of the car on the right and vice versa.

Pirelli's action plan
 
Apparently the e-mail the FIA asked for from Pirelli to explain tyre failures at Silverstone "includes notes on tyres being mounted the wrong way round"...

Ruh-roh...

Think that one had slipped everyone's minds... I recall that Mercedes was doing it... but I didn't realize how many other teams were doing it, too...
 
Roo;8625951[URL="http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/108507"
Pirelli's action plan[/URL]

All entirely reasonable in my view.

The camber issue is obvious -- some teams were visibly running extreme angles last weekend, and a couple years back Red Bull played so fast and loose with Pirelli's recommendations at Spa, I think it was, that Horner and Newey acknowledged afterwards that they'd taken excessive risks with driver safety.

The pressures likewise. If Pirelli say 19 psi is the lower limit and a team instead goes with 16 psi, any failure is very much on the team.

The side-swapping business was documented earlier in the year. More risk-taking by teams.

Now let's see if Charlie and the stewards start enforcing track limits.
 
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Some teams have been running the rear wheels on opposite hubs - so the OSR wheel is on the NSR hub and vice versa. The reasons are complex but there can be a performance and/or life advantage to it.


Roo
Putting tyres designed for the left side of the car on the right and vice versa.

Oh, now I understand. It quite possibly answers why the tire that traditionally takes the majority of the load wasn't the ones exploding, though that might not be entirely accurate either.
 
Just as a reminder:

amg-fb-monaco-2013-rear-tyre.jpg
 
^ And there's an example of "improper mounting"...although it worked.

-tree'd.
 
I know this is going to sound crazy/stupid, but do you think they're doing swaps to counter the directional wear rate of the tyre.. at expense of rotational torsion? (Yeah, like i know what that means :lol:, i don't BTW, just clutching at straws.)
 
Gary Anderson gave a great explanation why teams were swapping them round a couple of GPs ago. It very much is on purpose.
 
I know this is going to sound crazy/stupid, but do you think they're doing swaps to counter the directional wear rate of the tyre.. at expense of rotational torsion? (Yeah, like i know what that means :lol:, i don't BTW, just clutching at straws.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/22762318

Gary Anderson
These sorts of things have always gone on in F1.
I remember an incident in Canada back in 1997 when I was at Jordan. Most teams were using Goodyear tyres and during the first practice session, to everyone's surprise including Goodyear, the majority of cars were blistering the rear tyres to an extent that some were delaminating.

On the Friday evening Goodyear wanted to call a meeting of all the teams to discuss the problem as it was a real safety issue that had not popped up before.

But as F1 is very competitive most teams didn't want to do this and we all went about our own fixes.

I have always tried to think outside the box and while Goodyear shaved some rubber off the inner shoulder of some teams' tyres and other teams altered the car set-up, I believed it was more of a problem with the inherent tyre design and sat down with Goodyear to try to understand the tyre a little better.

Goodyear, like Pirelli do now, fitted the tyres to rotate in a certain direction, and after a long conversation it came to light that the tyre had what is called "ply steer".

This means that when the rear tyre is driving the car forward, the tread of the tyre wants to steer off at a small angle to the direction of the rim it is mounted on. This is created in the construction and that is why the tyres are mounted in a certain direction.

To discover the actual direction the "ply steer" tried to force the tyre, the Goodyear engineers at the track had to call back to their base in Akron, Ohio, to ask the designers/engineers.

After getting the information, I thought about it for a while and asked them to mount the tyres to run in the opposite direction.

They were not keen initially, as it meant stripping and re-mounting all our rear tyres, but eventually they agreed and prepared two sets for us to run in the Saturday morning session.

Guess what? Next day we had no blisters and all the other teams did.

Annoyingly, Goodyear then changed the tyres of all the big teams before they would do ours. This meant we struggled to get the tyres up to temperature before qualifying.

Anyway, from there on in Goodyear rear tyres were mounted in the opposite direction at all tracks.

The reason the problem existed was because, to get rear-end stability at the majority of tracks, the back wheels of an F1 car run with 'toe-in' - a bit like if you were pigeon toed.

If the "ply steer" is going towards the outside of the tyre, then you will have to use more toe-in to get the stability. This creates more heat in the tyre because it is slipping more going down the straights - it will actually slow the car down on the straight.

If you turn the tyre around and the "ply steer" is running in the same direction as the toe-in then you can use less toe-in and reduce the heat in the tyre. At least this was my thinking and it did work.

On the front the problem is different as you are not applying driving torque, only braking torque for a very short time, so the "ply steer" is not such an issue.

However, it can alter the car's turn-in characteristics so, depending on the car, running the tyres differently will change how the rubber degrades.
The point being that many of the teams have obviously discovered these same sorts of characteristics in the Pirellis.
 
Cheers Ardius (& Samus). 👍 I'd never heard of "ply steer" before. So, that's what they've been up to.. I wonder whether Pirelli picked up on it straight away, and if so, did they warn the teams that it's a strict no-no, or did the warning fall on deaf ears?
 
Cheers Ardius (& Samus). 👍 I'd never heard of "ply steer" before. So, that's what they've been up to.. I wonder whether Pirelli picked up on it straight away, and if so, did they warn the teams that it's a strict no-no, or did the warning fall on deaf ears?

They've known about it and been letting them get away with it since Melbourne.
 

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