F1 2024 speed gains now “beyond expectation”, says Pirelli

Pirelli says speed gains being made by Formula 1 teams are now “beyond expectation,” as it becomes mindful about the impact on tyre loads.

During a season when the grid has started to make some solid gains with their 2024 cars, recent grands prix have highlighted that the progress being made by squads is much greater than anticipated.

This has been highlighted again in Abu Dhabi with Lando Norris’s fastest time from practice of 1m23.517s already just shy of Max Verstappen’s pole position effort from last year of 1m23.455s.

But the step up from 12 months is clear, with Charles Leclerc’s fastest FP2 time from 2023 being 1m24.809s. The speed increase in FP1 year-to-year was 1.7 seconds

Pirelli’s F1 chief engineer Simone Berra admitted that the current cars were now “very fast” – which meant loads were greater on tyres than predicted.

“The last races, we have seen even an even higher increase than expected, and we have seen very high loads, especially from two or three teams,” he explained.

“From the simulations, we normally have one for the end of the season and one for the middle of the season for the year, and nobody thought to have these kind of loads. [They are] basically beyond expectation, I would say.

“So it’s interesting how much they are evolving with the cars, honestly, because we thought that at some point, they [the teams] would reach sort of maximum level of performance.

“But there are still some higher loads to gain and some performance to gain. And we’re seeing in the last races, for example, that Mercedes has improved a lot. It’s very interesting.”

The below table shows how the pole position times from last year compare to this year which shows how much the lap times have evolved.

* wet qualifying
 
While the gains have ramped up this year, Berra is unsure about how much that will flow into next season.

“We received the team simulations at the end of November, so we are now looking at those in detail,” he said.

“For the moment, we still don’t have a clear picture. Obviously, we expect some improvement, but we need to understand from the data if the increase in performance will be, let’s say, much lower and if we will be in a more stable situation.”

Sparks fly from Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF-23

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

High pressure response

Pirelli has always been mindful about an increase in loads opening up the risk of tyres being pushed beyond the limits and hitting problems.

In the past it has sometimes responded with making structural changes to the construction to help improve durability – as happened at the 2023 British Grand Prix – but this is something that would be unlikely for next year because there is a focus on sorting the 2026 rubber.

Berra said that Pirelli does not want to do that again next year

“Basically, we don’t want to change construction throughout the season because we think it’s not really fair,” he said. “We provide one specification and that should be the same for the rest of the season.

“For Silverstone last year, the reason was that the improvement in terms of fatigue was quite significant, and we proposed this to have a better integrity for the tyres.

“But we don’t expect to have something similar next year because the new structure has improved both fatigue and standing wave resistance.”

One way that Pirelli could respond to any problems caused by increased loads could be to increase tyre pressures at the season goes on – something which it could do on a case-by-case basis.

“We would react with the pressure, but I would rather prefer not to increase too much the pressure – and I think the teams think like that too,” added Berra.

“It’s because then you start generating overeating, and start generate graining. So we would like to keep the pressure as, let’s say, low as possible.”