Drivers’ complaints about the slippery asphalt characterized Formula 1’s first Las Vegas Grand Prix. Spoiled by the “gold standard”, as George Russell described the asphalt in Jeddah, several Formula 1 drivers asked themselves why there was such a thing in Vegas There was a regression.
Pirelli Motorsport Director Mario Isola had already explained during the weekend that special treatment of the asphalt like in Jeddah was not possible. Las Vegas is a real street circuit that is also open to traffic.
It is known that asphalt, when freshly laid, has to “sweat” – i.e. secrete bitumen – for a year before it reaches its final grip level. The asphalt in Vegas is at this stage, that’s why it was so slippery. In Jeddah, the bitumen was pressed out of the asphalt using high-pressure cleaners – an artificial aging process.
If the asphalt offers too little grip, why doesn’t tire supplier Pirelli react? “I’m not sure if we can do anything with the tires unless we drive even softer than now,” says Isola after the premiere on the “Strip”. Pirelli offers five compounds from C1 (hardest) to C5 (softest), three of which are brought to the races.
Drivers are in demand
“That’s the discussion we had in Monaco. The three selected tire compounds that we also use here [C3 bis C5], are probably too tough for Monaco. And in cold temperatures or drying conditions or mixed conditions, the grip is of course very low. And when there is a safety car, these situations become even worse.”
According to Isola, under normal conditions the tires lose 35 to 40 degrees on the home straight alone. “I can imagine that they will lose even more behind the safety car.” But then the drivers are asked.
In general, he demands a little more flexibility from them: “I understand that it’s nice for the drivers to have grip, then they can push. Of course I respect every opinion of the drivers – they drive the car and know what they’re doing. But “I think that we should have different grip in 24 different races and it’s good if there are those differences.”
“I personally believe that we should have different types of asphalt on the different tracks, because if we have the same level of grip everywhere, that doesn’t correspond to the DNA of Formula 1. We don’t have the same grip in Monaco as in Bahrain. We choose different tires, the drivers have to adapt their driving style and speed to the grip level.”
Warming up versus breaking down: opposite signs
Pirelli asks the fundamental question: Do the Formula 1 teams want a tire that gets up to temperature quickly but has a high level of degradation, or the opposite? In addition, Charles Leclerc, who noted that it was very difficult to get the tires back up to temperature after the second safety car phase, was driving on the hard compound (C3).
“I would say that the hard compound here was a conservative decision. And obviously you had to push harder to get heat into the tires,” comments Isola.
“A comment from Max was interesting to me [Verstappen]: ‘We were able to push the tires.’ So the point is that in the future we can probably work in such a way that we sacrifice the warm-up phase a little, but in return we protect the tires better from overheating, which the drivers don’t like either.”
“We have to make a compromise. Normally we don’t hear negative comments about the warm-up phase, but then the riders complain about overheating. Today on the Hard the opposite was the case.”
“The problem is that on a not so rough track, if you don’t put a lot of energy into the tires and the temperatures are cold, it’s difficult to keep the heat in the tires. But you can [Safety-Car-Fahrer Bernd] Don’t ask Mayländer to drive faster.”
“The warm-up was a bit difficult because of the asphalt and the track layout, but then you could and had to push the tire to maintain the temperature. We have to do that [bei der Weiterentwicklung] take into account.”