Pirelli’s Isola spoke to Russell about his tyre complaints · F1 · RaceFans

Pirelli’s motorsport director, Mario Isola, spoke with George Russell about the driver’s criticism of their tyres.

Russell said “serious conversations” were needed with Pirelli after last weekend’s race in Baku. The Mercedes driver was critical of what he believes is the inconsistent performance of F1’s tyres.

During the second stint in Baku, Russell slipped back from the leading group of Oscar Piastri, Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez before gaining on them in the later stages of the race.

“The first half of the race, we were 1.5 seconds off the pace. The last 20 laps, I was a second quicker than Oscar and Charles and three tenths quicker than Max [Verstappen], Checo and Carlos,” Russell said last week.

“It’s the same circuit, same driver, same car – we just went from a yellow tyre to a white tyre. Honestly, it is actually pretty infuriating that it changes this much. It’s not just the Mercedes, it’s every team and every driver. One session, you’re fast, the next you’re not. And there’s only one thing that changes.”

“I think even the people who make the tyres don’t understand the tyres.”

After Russell’s comments, Isola approached Russell to discuss his complaints with the tyres. Isola says that the tyre supplier found no anomalies in their data with other drivers they analysed.

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“I always talk to the drivers, because it’s useful to better understand,” Isola told the official F1 channel.

“Obviously in the heat of the moment after the race he had some stuff and we had a chat together. He explained to me that obviously he didn’t feel the performance with the medium compound, while the car was quite faster on the hard. Looking at the data from all the cars in Baku, we didn’t find anything strange in terms of performance of the tyres.”

Isola believes tyres are just one of many variables that contribute to team performance over a race weekend and even a single grand prix session.

“I would say that there are many elements that are contributing to the performance; the set-up of the car, how gently you introduce the tyre in the first laps, the track evolution,” he explained. “So when you have a championship where any thousandth of the second counts in the final result, obviously the stress is at a very high level and also a small difference in performance could play a role in the final result.

“But Williams was performing quite well with both the compounds as well as McLaren and other teams. So we should look specifically at what happened to Mercedes, but we usually make analysis that are across all the teams.”

However Russell, who is also a director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, still appeared to have some concerns over tyre performance following yesterday’s qualifying session. “I don’t understand these bloody tyres,” he said on his radio during Q1. “I don’t understand how we lose eight tenths one session to the next. So different.”

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