Pirelli Motorsport head Mario Isola says he knows the situation Haas is in with regards to its tyres but adds that it isn’t a common problem to everyone in F1 2019.
Pirelli brought slight tweak in their tyre making process to avoid blistering in 2019 after problems with it in 2018 F1 season. They also got a thinner thread compounds for this season which seems like is hampering Haas, at the very least.
The American outfit’s race pace has been disastrous while they have managed to exceed in practice and qualifying. They are putting efforts into getting it right by various means and it seems like things worked better in F1 Spanish GP with a double points finish.
The troubles in getting the tyres work forced Haas’ Guenther Steiner to be quite vocal in the media about Pirelli. The Italian manufacturer, meanwhile, says that they know about the problems but they cannot help much as it is not a common issue to all in 2019.
While speaking with the media including FormulaRapida.net, Steiner when alongside Isola in Barcelona, said: “Mario knows better than me. He’s the expert on tyres, not me you know. We have got issues, we cannot get them to work.
“We cannot get the heat into them on certain kinds of tracks and that is our problem. I said in Baku that we would be struggling, beforehand. For Barcelona, I was more confident, not completely, be should get them to work here and we get them to work here.
“But we have an issue that we cannot get the tyres to work at each track, so that is our issue.” While in response, Isola said: “I believe that Baku is quite a unique circuit, where you have an asphalt that is very smooth.
“So it is not going to generate energy into the tyre, you have a long straight, cold weather conditions, the tyres are losing a lot of temperature and we know from the past the characteristics of the circuit.
“Last year, when we developed the current product, we were require to have a product without blistering – you remember last year we had some race with blistering – and to reduce overheating. That was a clear request from the drivers.
“So basically, our tyres have been developed with this in mind. Also, the working ranges are probably a bit higher than last year. But we didn’t experience any issue in Barcelona in the pre-season test. We had good weather, but it was February, March, and the same in Melbourne.
“In Bahrain, OK, I had a chat with Guenther, I know their situation, and I hope they find a solution to that but I cannot say that it is a common problem to everybody. In Baku, because of the circuit characteristics it was a bit more difficult to keep the front and rear tyres in the right operating window.
“The operating windows cannot be narrower than last year because don’t forget that we have two compounds, that we call C3 and C4, that are the same compounds as we had last year, so at least with these two compounds we have the same operating window, and this is the analysis I can do now.”
Haas has been working on solutions already and it looked like it worked for the better in Spain but more work needs to be done. They worked further in the two-day Barcelona F1 in-season test with Pietro Fittipaldi and Kevin Magnussen.
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