Frederic Vasseur says Ferrari has tried to stay away from the F1 team politics in 2024 after it was dragged in another relating to tyre cooling.
Around the Brazil GP, reports – especially from Motorsport Network – started to float regarding Red Bull seeking FIA’s guidance about a tyre cooling trick being deployed by McLaren and possibly even Ferrari. It stemmed from Lando Norris’ dominance performance in F1 Singapore GP where he won by over 20s margin.
The latest saga popped up after back and forth between the current F1 title rivals, whether related to rear wing and or even front bib – both of which were successful bids. The FIA looked into the request from Red Bull after Brazil GP and reportedly found nothing undertaken by the teams to cool their tyres in an illegal manner.
The saying was that the teams were exploiting tyre cooling by adding minimal amount of water, thereby trimming down overheating of the tyres, which in turn was aiding in overall performance increase. When asked about the topic, Red Bull’s Christian Horner simply replied with a ‘no comment’ answer.
But Ferrari chief Vasseur didn’t understand the complaint in the first place, while revealing the request he made to the Ferrari team personnel to anyhow avoid getting into the team politics in 2024 and concentrate on their own performance rather than get into the deep end and lose their minds over it.
“I don’t know where…first, I won’t go into this field because it is one of the assets of the team this year to stay away from all the polemics,” said Vasseur to media. “I don’t understand the theory because I think we are all trying to remove humidity from everywhere, not to put something into the tyres.”
Pirelli chief Mario Isola, meanwhile, also played down the chances of any tricks. Their own analysis and investigations showed no undue games played by any F1 teams. “I cannot see anything strange from the data we have,” he said to the media.
“I don’t have any evidence. It’s up to the FIA now to decide what to do and to tell us if we can support, because at the end of the day the only thing we can do is to support them. How to do that is very easy [in practical terms]. You have a valve, you put water inside. How the system works is a different story.
“It’s basically a thermal effect – heat transfer between the tyre and the rim that should give more consistency or less degradation to the tyres, even if you have worse control of the pressure. Because if you have a vapor inside the tires, you lose control of the pressure, you have a pressure that is higher. I heard the story, I tried to understand myself how it works and I collected this information. But if anyone did it or not, it’s still a question mark.”
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