Vasselon: “Simplified strategies”

Toyota's technical director discusses the new types of tires used in Formula 1. For the strong man of the Japanese team, it has become easier to better exploit the current rubbers, which allows them to be used in races with skill.

Published on 14/04/2009 à 16:10

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Pascal Vasselon, why do tires have such an impact on the performance of your car ?
This is the only contact the cars have with the track! You can have a very good car but, if your tires do not succeed in translating the qualities of your car, you will not obtain good performance. Tires are one of the two major success factors in Formula 1, with aerodynamics.

Is it more interesting to only know one manufacturer, instead of witnessing a ?tire war?? ?
When we had two manufacturers, tires became the primary performance factor. From now on, Bridgestone having the monopoly, we focus less on this parameter. We just try to use them as best we can.

How can a car make the most of the performance of tires?
They must be kept at the right temperature to exploit their adhesion without causing them to overheat. A tire that is too cold does not grip the track well enough; a tire that is too hot deteriorates quickly. They must therefore be kept within this range to exploit their strengths.

Is it more difficult to exploit them this season?
We are at the start of the season, the compounds are new, so we have to learn to work with this new type of tire. In Sepang, we put on hard compounds, of which we had few references in winter testing. We also went from grooved tires to slick tires, and they don't react the same way. So we have a lot of work but it?s very interesting.

Do tire differences complicate your tactical choices?
Bridgestone provides us with very varied rubbers in terms of stiffness and temperature on each race. They are more differentiated and allow us to have a real tire strategy. Like in Melbourne, where we carefully monitored the behavior of the tires.

Why more in Melbourne and not in Malaysia?
None of the tire types suited us in Australia. The soft compounds were too soft, the intermediate tires were too hard. It was therefore difficult to make the most of them. This did not happen in Malaysia, where both types of rubber conformed to their characteristics. The strategy was simplified.