F1 | Tire case, Isola: "We cannot control the pressures during the race, and neither can the FIA"

In recent days the controversy between Red Bull and Pirelli has probably reached its peak. After Verstappen's accusations after the race in Baku, when he declared on Dutch TV that he wanted to speak to the Formula 1 tire supplier to ask for explanations regarding the explosion in the final laps of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Pirelli for its part confirmed that the tires used in that stint had one psi less than what was recommended by the Italian manufacturer, so basically both Red Bull and Aston Martin (but probably others too, ed.) did not take these indications into account, facing risks that evidently favored the retirements of Verstappen and Stroll two weeks ago. Mario Isola, head of Pirelli in Formula 1, wanted to clarify everything to Mara Sangiorgio on Sky Sports during the first free practice session in Le Castellet.

“I wanted to clarify a couple of things – Isola said. What Max said is partially true, in the sense that we do not receive the car's telemetry data during the race, but three days later, so it is impossible for us to immediately intervene on any element while the tire is working on the track. What are running conditions? All those parameters have an influence on the use of the tyre: we give prescriptions so that the rubber is used within certain parameters, and I'm not just talking about pressure, but also the speed that the teams expect to reach, downforce and camber. This is all information that they communicate to us before the race, in the simulations that they send us. Consequently we do our calculations, the tool now works quite well. We hypothesize what the running pressure might be and from here the prescriptions come out, therefore the minimum starting pressures that we give and the maximum tyrewarmer temperatures, as well as the camber".

“We don't have a sensor that allows us to check running pressure, but the FIA ​​doesn't have one either, because the sensors used by the teams are exclusively theirs. We don't want to give numbers now, also because we receive confidential data from the teams, we cannot disclose it, so through what the teams provide us, we can hypothesize what a running condition is. To all this data we add the safety factor, that is, we add a certain pressure value that allows us to operate in the conditions we want, but this applies to any element of the car. What happened in Baku was that the margin that we hypothesized did not exist, because not only the pressure, but also other parameters were above expectations and the rupture that we saw is the classic one caused by standing waves, that is, when you go at very high speed with a tire inflated less than we would have expected, with a notable aerodynamic load, and here we also add the camber, because the least stressed tire broke, the left rear, and this made us think about debris ”.

“The FIA ​​will now, with these new directives, check the pressures when cold and heat the tire again to see if the pressures return to the initial value. A series of additional checks that try to better identify the situation and see if a team is working within the regulation. It's not up to me to decide or say whether a team works legally or not, there is a Federation that has the task of establishing it. The fact that the teams work on parameters that we do not recommend does not mean that they are irregular. The valves have not been sealed, but a number of sets of tires will be identified and then checked further and the valves will be sealed there. Then further checks will be carried out on the temperatures of the tyrewarmers, which must respect certain parameters. Me this afternoon – concludes Isola – I will be happy to answer pilots' questions in the briefing I will attend, so if anyone wants to ask me something, I will be happy to give them explanations. With a standard sensor acquired from the FIA, we could impose the so-called running pressure."