Exploding tires are just part of what’s wrong with Formula One
DAVID BOOTH I suspect that Bernie Ecclestone and his colleagues are happy that the travails of Edward Snowden and Mohammed Morsi remain front-page news. For, were it not our fascination with the implosion of democracy on one continent and its resurrection on another, methinks that the spontaneous explosion of four tires in a front-line Formula One race and the fingerpointing, butt-covering carping that followed would have been topof-the-fold TMZ fodder.
As it is, the motorsport media is all a-Twitter with the spectacle of four of F1’s front-runners — former champion and, until then, race leader Lewis Hamilton, no less — suffering catastrophic high-speed blowouts around Britain’s historic Silverstone racetrack.
Beyond the immediate accusations — Pirelli blames the teams for installing the tires on the wrong wheels and the drivers for schmucking Silverstone’s high curbs too hard while, well, everyone else blames Pirelli — the subject of Formula One’s basic tire design that bears a little more scrutiny.
Seemingly lost in all these recriminations is that Pirelli deliberately engineers its Formula One tires to be bad.
Yes, you read that right; the tires in what is supposed to be the pinnacle of all of motor racing are deliberately designed for poorer durability, literally acting like an equalizer of both race-car performance and driver ability.
Even more of a scandal is that it’s not Pirelli’s fault. Whether it is, as the blogosphere seems to believe, an FIA mandate or, as Pirelli contends, a direct request from Formula One’s promoters and team principles, it is nonetheless true that Pirelli deliberately produces a tire that loses much of its effectiveness after just six to 10 laps. The inspiration, believe it or not, comes from the 2010 Canadian Grand Prix, which, it seems, F1’s officialdom deemed both competitive and exciting because there was so much action in and leaving the pits.
It’s a sad, sad state of affairs, one that I am sure has the many legends that Formula One has given rise to rolling in their graves. Indeed, I can’t think of anything that is more indicative of the sorry state of Formula One racing than deliberately engineering crappy tires because we’re so desperate for any kind of excitement in Grand Prixes that even pit-lane passing is considered drama.
So never mind the Pirelli scandal. It’s a mere tempest in a teapot. The real story is that Formula One chiefs are sacrificing everything — the engineering advancements that should be the raison d’etre for the huge investment in racing, the creation of the legends that are part of the mythology of sport and the fealty that legions espouse for the sport’s legendary teams — at the altar of television.
They’re willing to do anything — even engineering, yes, deliberately crappy tires — just so we can have a photo finish.