Pirelli boss defends F1 2014 tyres

During the build up to this weekends British Grand Prix Pirelli?s Motorsport Director Paul Hembery has had to defend Pirelli’s ‘conservative’ approach to Formula One this season.

It’s a debate in stark contrast to last years events at Silverstone.

Lets rewind 12 months, on Vital F1 we dubbed the 2013 British Grand Prix as a ‘farcical race’.

We wrote: Formula One was finally caught out for its ridiculous testing regulations where the Pirelli tyres simply fell over under the pressure that today’s cars put through them.

And added: Six tyre failures during the race, four at high speed, with race leader Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, Toro Rosso’s Jean-Eric Vergne and McLaren’s Sergio Perez all having frightening moments.

As the tyres simply exploded, all the drivers managed to avoid serious crashes, Massa span, but the rest managed to keep the car in a straight line.

Debris fired across the track and at one moment, splattered themselves all over Kimi Raikkonen, with big lumps of rubber and other compounds that go into the tyres hitting the Finn square on the helmet.

The simple fact is it could have been a lot worse, these were serious incidents and Lewis Hamilton was quite right to be angry after the race.

Following this race Pirelli made immediate changes to how the tyres were manufactured and for 2014 they changed the tyre compounds once again.

But it would seem Pirelli remain in a no-win situation. Last season they designed a tyre to the remit set them by Formula One. This season they make a safer more reliable tyre and it gets complaints by some of the drivers.

?I think we had to take a little step back; we certainly couldn?t have been as aggressive as we?ve been in the last three years, where the teams, I would say, had to really engineer a solution to getting the best out of the tyres. And that?s why you had a lot of very dramatically different strategies. Hembery told Sky Sports.

?This year, it?s certainly a lot easier for the teams, they?re able to manage their strategies in almost a linear way. You see the majority of races with people following almost the same strategy but I think that was necessary with such a big technical [power-unit and aerodynamic] change.?