Pirelli boss pleased with racing

This season has so far been a quiet one for Formula One’s official tyre manufacturer Pirelli.

The controversies of tyre failures and rapidly degrading tyres feels like something of the long-distant past as Formula One moved into a new era of hybrid technology.

The tyre issues are still there for the teams in 2014, it’s just that the new engine regulations are taking all of the focus away.

In Canada for example, Formula One teams ran the super-soft and the soft tyres during the race. Something that brought different issues to different teams.

Some teams couldn’t get the best from the red striped compound, Mercedes certainly appeared to often struggle during practice and qualifying to set faster times on that tyre with the yellow stripe proving to be their best tyre.

This closed the gap to the likes of Williams on the Saturday, whilst on the Sunday, Williams and Felipe Massa used the tyre strategy perfectly to give the Brazilian an excellent run at the end of the Grand Prix.

On fresh tyres, Massa raced through the field and caught the race leaders at a pace of around 2 seconds a lap.

If it hadn’t ended with a collision with Force India’s Sergio Perez, Massa could have easily ended up getting past Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel for the final podium position.

That said it was only Force India’s differing approach to tyre strategy, taking the tortoise strategy of longer tyre stints in comparison to Williams’ hare strategy that had given Perez a chance of a podium finish anyway.

‘Once again, Canada delivered a thrilling grand prix: this time in hot conditions, which led to plenty of interesting tyre strategies. With such an action-packed race, we saw plenty of improvisation from several drivers as they attempted to use tyre strategy to their best advantage.’ Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery told formula1.com after the race.

‘Congratulations to Daniel Ricciardo for his first win after a truly memorable race. Congratulations also to Force India, which has often taken a different approach to tyre strategy compared to their rivals in all the time we have been involved in Formula One.

‘In Canada this led to a good result, which could have been even better had it not been for the accident right at the end, demonstrating again how tyre strategy can be used to boost final positions.’