Sports Illustrated - Sports Illustrated - F1 Las Vegas
Ruler of the Rubber
THERE AREN’T many constants among Formula One teams. The drivers are unique, as are most elements of their cars, right down to how their steering wheels are configured. But there is one thing that’s the same on every car: the tires. Pirelli has been the sole tire supplier to F1 since 2011. Founded more than 150 years ago in Milan, Italy, Pirelli has an essential but often overlooked role in the championship. Every race weekend the company delivers three sets of tires—soft (more grip, less durability), hard (more durability, less grip) and medium (a compromise)—designed specifically for use on that particular course. Teams can then build their strategy around those compounds. The company’s motor sport efforts are headed by charismatic Italian Mario Isola.
SI: People may think a tire is just a tire. However, Pirelli is constantly trying to upgrade the ones used in F1. What does that process look like? Mario Isola: First, we have to guarantee safety. That’s why we update our product every year. You have more load on the tires and more speed, and the stress that you put on the tires is much higher than the year before.
Second, when we came to F1 in 2011, it was a bit difficult with everybody asking for something different. But now we have a target letter—it’s a document where we have listed delta lap time between compounds, the level of degradation. The [goal] is to give the teams the possibility to design their own strategy.
SI: What’s one thing you think people won’t know about Pirelli?
MI: The level of complexity behind designing tires. A lot of times, I listen to people talking about the tires and how it’s easy to compare current cars with cars from 20 years ago. How [the cars weighed] 200 kilograms less, or [there was] a lot more stress on the tires, a different aero
package. But it’s not correct to compare a different period of F1. Requirements from the teams are increasing more and more every year, so they ask for more data or different characteristics of the tires. We have to follow those requests, too, because we are part of the show and we want to propose new ideas.
SI: One topic that is popular is bringing back a “tire war” to F1. We saw it in the past with Bridgestone and Michelin both supplying teams in the early 2000s, which introduced another element of strategy. Was having different tire manufacturers a good thing or a bad thing for the championship? MI: It’s a different world now. In the past, most of the teams were testing tires for probably
100 days per year. Can you imagine [that], in a period where we are talking about cost caps in F1? I believe that spectators like to see the driver as the hero of the sport, not the tire company. With the sole supplier, everybody has the same product. There is still an advantage if you learn how to use the tires in a better way.
SI: Across other championships, we are seeing tire manufacturers use more sustainable materials in their
compounds. Is that something we can expect to see in F1?
MI: We have a dedicated department for sustainability and we are researching a lot of solutions. We’re talking about raw materials, transportation, end of life and so on. In the future, we want to increase the percentage of sustainable materials in our tires and recycle new material from the old tires.
SI: Many fans would like to see a comeback of the iconic rainbow collection that debuted in 2018, which included seven compounds that were distinguished by different colors such as pink, ice blue and orange. Whereas now, we only have red for the softest tire of the weekend, yellow for medium and white for the hardest.
MI: I liked the rainbow, honestly, but it was a bit complicated for spectators that were watching F1 without any deep technical interest. I believe that with the current system, we reached the target with three colors that are easily linked to hard, medium or soft. They’re always the same. But we also provide information to passionate people about which compounds we selected for each event. So I’m not sure that we will see the rainbow again.