LONDON (Reuters) – Formula One is likely to be more predictable this season after teams opted to stick with last year’s tire specification, according to Pirelli’s racing head Mario Isola.
The 10 teams voted unanimously last month to reject new tires that the sport’s sole supplier had been developing for 2020.
The sport is facing significant upheaval in 2021 with new regulations and teams were reluctant to devote more resources to modifying aerodynamics at a time when they were already stretched.
Isola said all the teams were now very familiar with the 2019 tires and there would be no learning curve, as in the past, and nor should there be any struggle with the warmup phase.
“The only negative side that I can see is that we take out a bit of unpredictability. That is something that sometimes is spicing up the show,” he told Reuters during a visit to the Autosport International show in Birmingham.
“We see that every time there is something the engineers cannot predict, we have better racing… so without the element of the tires we are taking out a bit of unpredictability.
“We know that teams are focusing on one stop strategies as much as possible. They have also some good data from 2019 so it will be probably slightly easier for the teams to make a strategy.”
Isola expected cars to be quicker due to continued development, probably in the range of 1-1.5 seconds a lap on past trends, and Pirelli would have to raise starting pressures as a consequence.
How much would depend on performance estimates provided by the teams.
“We are now receiving simulations on the expected performance and we will make our calculation in order to give them the feedback on what is the level of the increase in pressure,” he said.
