Formula One Management are destroying their sport with a tyre from Pirelli that looks more determined to spew rubber than hold itself together.
I wish I were exaggerating but I'm not. If the measure of skill behind the sport is 'who is the quickest driver' then the tyre needs to allow this vision to be realised, not the show we saw instead in China.
Current degradation, particularly on the softer compounds, is making drivers hold back when they should be letting loose. Because this is motor racing after all, isn't it?
Not a single driver in the Chinese Grand Prix raced for eight laps on the soft compound. When your medium, or standard, compound is being used for an average of 20 laps then you know the race is becoming borderline 'artificial.'
Lewis Hamilton was very vocal in the lead up to the race saying that he had never had tyres behave this way before. Qualifying soon attested to his worries, with his teammate Nico Rosberg losing five seconds over as many laps in a horror stint.
Hamilton's former team principal, McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh, said that "it's quite excruciating trying to save tyres. It's painful... and however bad it is for me, it must be a lot worse if you have to drive like that."
If I'm feeling heated about it from the perspective of a viewer, I can't begin to imagine the frustration of teams.
In saying this, I certainly don't want a return to the early 2000's where the superior car trounced all and driver ability had a slightly lesser impact. Schumacher's Ferrari F2004 was the most dominant machine I've seen since Senna and Prost's infamous McLaren MP4/4.
Though the racing was flat out in both years, the gulf between the front and mid pack was incredibly wide. Let's never see that again. We should be thankful that today as many as five teams look more than capable of taking home a race win.
Instead, I want a balance. Believe it or not, we can live in a world where tyre degradation, car performance and driver ability can have an equal impact on an F1 championship. We just haven't found it yet.
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| Fernando Alonso celebrates winning the 2013 Chinese Grand Prix |
Pit stops can make or break a race, but there is no need for three of them. I'm all for degradation having a slight impact on strategy, but as for defining a race (or even a championship)? It's gone too far.
Pirelli, to their credit, are only providing what 'challenge' has been given to them by FOM. They were asked to create a compound that fell away quickly and that would constantly asks questions of team strategy more than driver ability.
Much of the hate they have received should be directed towards the management responsible for the orders. It's not becoming a good look for the Italian manufacturers, as they are forced to swat off criticism race after race.
It almost brings out a desire to see another tyre war between suppliers, a-la Bridgestone/Michellin, to keep teams on edge and monitor each other to improve tyre performance.
A solution could be to set some form of quality control for tyre manufacturers, where a predefined rubber compound could be put in place. It could then have slight alterations made to it as long as they fall with certain boundaries.
The arguments for the poorer quality tyre are that it lends itself to more exciting racing and strategies, but the sport comes down to the driver. After piecing a car together, maintaining it and testing it, only one member of a team gets to run it around the track.
Why can't we have a tyre that respects that?
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