FORMULA One (F1) team, Lotus, is staying put with Pirelli’s mew rubber tyres for this season’s race.
Whilst other teams expressed that Pirelli should switch back to last year’s rubber, James Allison, Lotus’s technical director said that their team do not want Pirelli to alter their tyres. “We feel the current tyres makes for entertaining racing, but then we would say that as our car tends to prosper when the tyres are tender.” but then they would say that as the E21 “tends to prosper” of the soft rubber,” he said.
This season Pirelli introduced new softer rubber for their Formula One tyres, to increase degradation and changed the construction, to help with tyre warm-up. However, the tyres were noted to have degraded too quickly.
Allison described Lotus’s experience with the new tyres as “just one step softer all round than last year and the new construction makes it harder to access the rubber on the inner corner of the tyre.”
“In other words, the available rubber is reduced as it’s very tricky to get the entire width of the tyre in contact with the road, ” he added.
He, however admitted that while Lotus built their E21 racer that is easier on its tyres, a weakness of the E21 was getting temperature into the tyres in wet conditions.