Pirelli Race Chief Talks Tires, Personalities and the U.S. - Tire Review Magazine

Pirelli Race Chief Talks Tires, Personalities and the U.S.

Continental_Hembry_InterviewTire Review was a guest of Pirelli Tire North America at the recent Grand Prix of Mexico in Mexico City. During the event, we had the chance to sit down with Paul Hembry, Pirelli’s global director of motorsport, to chat about the tiremaker’s new Formula 1 supply deal and plans for the future.

On preparing for a brand new race surface, such as that at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

“It’s a challenge with the chemicals all over the surface coming from the bitumen. And when you get rain on top of that, as you can imagine, it makes the surface very slippery. So, we’ve seen a lot of evolution of the track during the couple days running, as the surface starts to bed down. On circuits that don’t get used a lot such as Sochi (Russia), where we went back to, it stays like that for years, whereas you go to somewhere like Austin (Texas), where there’s clearly a lot of action, there’s a lot of racing, a lot of track action, actually, the bitumen wears away, and you start seeing the aggregates of the surface coming through, and it becomes far more aggressive. So it is very, very slippery. For the teams, they were struggling to understand if it was just the surface or whether there was something they could do with the car to adjust to get the performance. But, as I say, the track has evolved very, very heavily. For them, of course, a slippery track means it’s the mechanical grip that’s really important.”

On preparing for such surfaces.

“We take measurements of the surface. We come with molders. We come here and actually mold the surface, take it back. We get an average run on an average car that we run in our simulator. So we have an idea, but unfortunately, because there’s a chemical reaction between the tire and the surface, you could underestimate that. In fact a lot of times they’re a little bit slower than what we anticipated. But the importance, for us, is more to the loadings of the tire, the casing structure loadings, because that’s where you can have issues of integrity. So we have to simulate that. It’s clearly a very quick track. It’s a fast track and has some demanding corners. It’s a nice track, actually. I think when we come here in future years when it’s been used for several seasons I think it’s going to be a very interesting race here.”

On the current (as of Nov. 1) status of Pirelli’s three-year tire supply contract with Formula 1.

“The new contract has to go to world council, which is on the 6th of December. That’s the formal process. We’re currently preparing contracts for the individual teams. You can imagine, they’re always very complex, but we’re in the process of finalizing contracts.”

On what fans can expect in terms of different new tires or improvements in tire performance.

“Next year is a bit different. Next year is an ongoing development of this year’s product. The main difference there is we’re bringing in another compound for street circuits or very smooth circuits, which dropped below the super soft, extreme soft, and that’s because we’re getting a number of circuits like this, or like Sochi, Monaco, Canada and Singapore where we’re finding that we’re going to one-stop racing. We want to go back to two-stops. So the teams have asked us to come up with another level below that. That’s one change. We’re also working on the structure of the tire. You know, the cars are evolving. Next year there’s going to be big performance improvements gained. The cars, if you look at them today, in corners are very high performance because they have quite a lot of weight because of the battery. It’s a heavy car. They’re still carrying a lot of fuel, starting off with 100 kilos. It’s not like when they had the refueling days. So the actual absolute performance of the cars at the moment is already very, very high, and we realize there’s going to be another big jump next year. So, we have to make modifications to our structure to deal with that.”

On Pirelli’s requirement that there be more tire testing allowed next season.

“We have one where we’re doing the testing. Abu Dhabi, on the Tuesday after the end of the season, we’re doing 12 hours testing with nine teams. So we’re probably running… it’s like a mini Sebring for us. We’re doing a 12-hour session. But going forward, the big change is to the regulations. In 2017, where the car will change dramatically, the tires are going to have different dimensions, much wider tires. To prepare for that we have to have some testing because the performance levels, from what we’re indicating, are going to be four seconds quicker, possibly five seconds quicker than today’s car. That’s a huge step forward. And most of that performance will be coming in corners. Tires take the brunt of all that energy and performance. So it’s a big, big change for all of us. And so, we have to have testing. We haven’t yet formalized how we’ll create that testing program, because until they decide the regulations we don’t know if we can test or the teams won’t be able to tell us if they can test on a current car, a current car modified, or whether they need to actually build a prototype car to represent what the 2017 car is. So, a little bit of the unknown for us, from my point of view.”

On Pirelli’s ability to test in the lab versus on track.

“You do a lot of the structural work in laboratory. You simulate race distances, the loading of the cars on a variety of indoor testing machines. And that gives you a very good indication of the structural integrity of the tire, and you don’t go on the track without having tested the structural changes. You’ve already done that work. The second one is the simulators. You can get a very good idea these days of drivability. The big question mark always remains, though, the compound in conjunction with the vehicle in conjunction with the surface, and, of course, the variety of surface changes you can get and the temperature changes you can get. That area still needs defining on the circuit because to try create two or three pit stops is actually a margin of maybe three laps on each set of tires, and that changes you from three to two or two to one even. It’s actually quite a fine area of window operating that you’re working with.”

On how much more Pirelli can leverage its Formula 1 involvement.

“We have some new technologies that we’re developing to bring in 2017. The idea there is to demonstrate some innovative technologies in motorsport, and that’s something we believe we will be able to do. And that will be a leverage of technologies that we apply to road car technology in the future. So there’ll be a very clear link between what we’re doing in F1 and what we’re doing in the road car technology. That’s one area, certainly, that we’re pushing very hard on. F1 itself is also going through a phase of transition. I think what we see today is probably not what we’re going to see at the end of our contract. There’s clearly going to be a number of changes in the sport to try to render it more competitive, more spectacular and only more appealing to the public.”

On team managers criticism of Pirelli wanting to do more in-season tire testing.

“They don’t design tires. That’s easy for them to say. There are also a lot of teams saying that there’s a dramatic lack of testing. So, I think from the public’s point of view, running around in wind tunnels, simulators, is not particularly exciting. The teams have huge budgets, all spent on technologies that are invisible to the public. I think there’s also a very good argument that if we actually go back on the track again, the drivers will actually drive more than 20 weekends a year, and the public will actually have a chance to see cars on a non-race weekend basis. It’s one of the few sports in the world that teams actually don’t practice. And the teams are split. Some of them say they want testing because they feel they’ve got an advantage in simulators or CFD. Others want testing because maybe they feel they’re not as well up to it. There’s no perfect solution. Teams have budgets; the top ones are at €250 million a season, so it’s not about driving costs up.”

On using testing to help promote the series.

“It depends on where you want to spend your money. The sport needs to be more visible, it needs to be more accessible. The analogy I give them is when the English Premier League soccer team is in its preseason, there’s about four or five teams that spend all their time in North America. They’re in the U.S. and Canada. And the other half are all down in Asia promoting the sport. And that’s something you can learn. You need to go beyond just hiding away. You have to go out and try and create your public and create awareness in the public. That’s something that, Formula One being a global sport, needs to do more of.”

On growing Formula 1 interest in the U.S.

“The brand Formula 1 is very well known in the U.S., which is quite interesting. We’re always surprised by that people know what it is, which is a good starting point. The U.S. really needs more races, that’s for sure, because otherwise the public has to watch races in the middle of the night or early in the morning, and that’s never going to create a huge following. We need more races that are appealing to the U.S. audience, meaning prime time television time. And I think Bernie Ecclestone already, I think this week or last week, mentioned that the U.S. can certainly handle three races. I’m certainly a believer of that. You need one in California, and I think there’s probably scope for having one up in the east. The New Jersey concept never really flew. There are some practical aspects of the sport that would need to change, I think, to fully engage an F1 audience in the U.S. Having said that, the audience it has is actually a very knowledgeable one and is very close to the typical user that we’re trying to attract. When we do our surveys, one of the highest recognitions of our customers who are involved with Formula One races are actually in the U.S., a really good percentage. So, that’s an interesting aspect. And the sport needs to grow on that. The sport talks often about wanting to increase its revenues, but you have to create the show, and you have to create the show where the audience is. The U.S. is an audience area, but you have to give them a product that works for the U.S. market. The time zone is a major issue. At the moment the television schedules are far too focused on the European schedule, having live television in Europe. So there’s a few fundamentals there that most certainly Mr. Ecclestone’s aware of. And we’re hopeful that over the next period of time that that can be changed.”

On the value of schedule continuity.

“The teams moan about having 20 races. I could probably say we should have 30 and race every weekend like NASCAR. And they’d say that would kill us; that would be impossible. I’d say take 100 million euros out of your wind tunnel testing and spend it on a second team and putting the show on the road. Personally, I’m a great believer that sports need continuity. People have a drug. They want to know that it will be there every weekend or every other weekend. It’s guaranteed. Sometimes we’re back to back, then we go every other weekend, and then we have a gap of three weeks. I mean, if you’re trying to create a fan base, you’ve got to have some level of repeatability. How many NASCAR races are there in a season? How many baseball games are there in a season? There’s a colossal amount. So people, when they get into the sport, they want it. The U.S. is a very good example. If you turn on the television you can catch a baseball game almost 24 hours a day. There is something going on somewhere, isn’t there? And that’s a little bit of the problem of F1 in that we have 20 races. People don’t really know if maybe it’s better doing 10 in a row and then gap for five weeks and then 10 more in a row. But continuity is something that is also very important. If you enjoy the races tomorrow and Sunday, you know, what a good race, when’s the next one? Oh, it’s in three weeks’ time. They want more of it. So I think there’s an area there that we can maybe learn from other sports, how you’re getting that deep interest in the sport.”

On technology and drivers.

“Formula 1 defines technology and diversification, compared to other sports, a high level of technology. But the reality is the public doesn’t understand it, and they can’t perceive it, can’t see it. It’s a sport that has a lot of high technology, which is very difficult to explain to the public. I’ve never been to a race in the world where anyone’s been very excited about a new wing lip on the car or a new tire. They want to see drivers battling it out, having great racing, and they want to see drivers as personalities. The real heroes of motorsport are the drivers, and we need to see them at the pinnacle. They’re the people that drive the public interest. You can’t take your car on the red carpet to the Oscars. It’s the driver that has to go. So Lewis Hamilton has got to be there. And that’s something that NASCAR does a good job with. I think the driver in the in NASCAR, even if they’re not the top, top driver, still has a very high profile within the sporting environment and the fan base. And that something, I think, that we should learn.”

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