F1 2016 tyre rules

After watching the Ted Notebook on 2016 tyres, I fell asleep half way into the 12 minute video.. you know something is bad if it takes that long to explain a tyre rule.

Anyway the video is here - http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/24...special-f1s-new-tyre-rules-for-2016-explained

And just found a graphic from reddit which explains it as well:



Although its easy to say 'just give them one tyre for the whole weekend' or whatever, it might give the teams more options and give us some more interesting results. I get the feeling after the teams get used to it though like after the last changes (didn't hear Vettel say 'the cliff' more than half the season iirc?) it will settle down to a set strategy.

Clear as mud?

As Ted explains, its not actually that open, as most of the tyres will be set by what they want to do in practice and qualifying.

We will get what we had before. An optimum strategy and a few outliers trying something odd.

The fact it's a bloody 14 week lead time annoys me.

amusing though that many pundits have been harping on about the Sport being too difficult for neutrals to understand - so they go and make it more complicated - although I understand it's to try and counter the other so called problem, in as much as trying to make it a more exciting spectacle.

No wonder more and more people are turning away from the sport. They really are trying their hardest to make it inaccessible.

What else is changing this year? I forget.

Absolute nonsense. Bonkers rules.

I'm too tired and drunk to make sense of that rules diagram!

I'd much rather they limited each team to "x" number of each slick compound, each car must use at least two different slick compounds per race unless it rains, team must inform FIA which two slick compounds they want for the race.

Williams might sacrifice Monaco by using the two hardest compounds in the race, because their car performs relatively badly with high downforce.

Redbull might sacrifice Monza by using the two hardest compounds, because their car performs relatively badly with low downforce.

etc. etc.

So the teams get to play their tyres strategically, knowing all compounds have to be used equally through the season, ahead of the meeting. If a meeting's race is affected by wet weather, the team still need to give up the dry tyre sets they pre-allocated to that meeting.

UTmaniac said:

I'm too tired and drunk to make sense of that rules diagram!

I'd much rather they limited each team to "x" number of each slick compound, each car must use at least two different slick compounds per race unless it rains, team must inform FIA which two slick compounds they want for the race.

Williams might sacrifice Monaco by using the two hardest compounds in the race, because their car performs relatively badly with high downforce.

Redbull might sacrifice Monza by using the two hardest compounds, because their car performs relatively badly with low downforce.

etc. etc.

So the teams get to play their tyres strategically, knowing all compounds have to be used equally through the season, ahead of the meeting. If a meeting's race is affected by wet weather, the team still need to give up the dry tyre sets they pre-allocated to that meeting.

Click to expand...

I think they'd sacrifice the races based on track deg rates rather than relative downforce performance but in principle I think I agree with you.

Season-long tyre strat rather than per-race tyre strat could add an interesting dimension to the whole season.

I'm looking forward to the new rules. Hopefully we'll some teams going for radical strategies e.g. using super softs when everyone is using medium/hards, I doubt it but we can but hope

Are these still the "30 laps and explode" Pirelli tyres used in 2015?

UTmaniac said:

I'd much rather they limited each team to "x" number of each slick compound, each car must use at least two different slick compounds per race unless it rains, team must inform FIA which two slick compounds they want for the race.

Williams might sacrifice Monaco by using the two hardest compounds in the race, because their car performs relatively badly with high downforce.

Redbull might sacrifice Monza by using the two hardest compounds, because their car performs relatively badly with low downforce.

etc. etc.

So the teams get to play their tyres strategically, knowing all compounds have to be used equally through the season, ahead of the meeting. If a meeting's race is affected by wet weather, the team still need to give up the dry tyre sets they pre-allocated to that meeting.

Click to expand...

Wasn't that the original thinking behind limiting the number of different gear ratios? Until it turned out that the new engines had so much torque it was relatively pointless.

CaptainRAVE said:

What else is changing this year? I forget.

Click to expand...

Definitely not the drivers and constructors championships. Or the excitement.

The_Abyss said:

Wasn't that the original thinking behind limiting the number of different gear ratios? Until it turned out that the new engines had so much torque it was relatively pointless.

Click to expand...

That and cost reduction, yes.

Are there any restrictions on sets of Intermediates & Full Wets or are they unlimited?

Looks every bit as dull as i've become accustomed too.

Why can't it just be, these are the compounds available, this is how many set you can have, do with them as you damned well please!

If they're handing back set A after Q3, does that mean if they set the fastest lap on those tyres they get to start the race on fresh tyres? or will they be allowed to start on fresh tyres next year anyway?

Calm said:

If they're handing back set A after Q3, does that mean if they set the fastest lap on those tyres they get to start the race on fresh tyres? or will they be allowed to start on fresh tyres next year anyway?

Click to expand...

It's the Q2 best lap tyres which they start the race on, the same as last year.

They start on the tyres used to set the fastest time in Q2. This was to put an end to the nonsense whereby people wouldn't compete at all in Q3 to try and gain a race advantage.

Cool, shows how much attention i paid last year!

DRZ said:

They start on the tyres used to set the fastest time in Q2. This was to put an end to the nonsense whereby people wouldn't compete at all in Q3 to try and gain a race advantage.

Click to expand...

This di my biggest hate about f1. "eta make up a stupid rule, to try and fix the issues another stupid rule is making.

Just have everyone start on new tyres, and they have to hand back at least 1 set of tyres from each qualifying session.

Starting on tyres used to set a time was introduced to fix the issue where people would batter through tyres trying to eke out microseconds of lap time without penalty. They wanted to reduce the number of tyres used (to make F1 "greener") and make behaviour in Quali have an effect on the race. Which they did. Q1/2/3 was brought in to stop Quali being 57-58 minutes of nothing happening and then a mad scramble to 1-shot a lap in at the very very end. It got spectacularly boring. Patch after patch after patch. Stupid.

I wonder what would happen if they forced Q1 to be the hardest of the 3 compounds, Q2 a choice of middle or softest and Q3 the softest only... Could be quite interesting if you were limited to only using one set of each compound and starting on the tyre you did your fastest lap on - do you gamble to get into the top-10 but have to then subsequently set a time on your now-worn super-softs (and then have to pit on lap 2...)? It would certainly punish teams who couldn't get their tyres to work across the full range of compounds, perhaps leading to more compromises and thus more unpredictable racing...

There's tire limits and especially with these tyres, people aren't going to just do endless laps anyway.

It's the same issue, trying to fix busted rules with new busted rules.
Or not updating old rules which become irrelevant when new rules are introduced.