After the appearance of a safety car at the end of the Canadian GP race, caused by Yuki Tsunoda’s accident at the exit of the pits, Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz locked in a tight battle for victory for many laps.
Verstappen could not get rid of Sainz , who was pressing the Red Bull driver until the checkered flag, always in distance of DRS or what is the same, less than a second.
This battle on the track was very important to Pirelli as they consider it to be a change from the battles that had taken place in the past, when the tires would become excessively overheated when two cars raced close to each other.
Analyzing the situation, Pirelli’s director of F1 and car racing in general, Mario Isola , is in no doubt that Sainz would not have been able to follow Verstappen so closely for so long with the old generation of cars and tyres.
Speaking to Motorsport.com, Isola said: “For me, the important thing about this race is to see that we have had what is called a close race.
“One of the objectives this year was to have close races, not pure overtaking thanks to DRS or another system. The goal was to give the drivers the opportunity to push their cars to the maximum and fight on the track.”
“And that’s exactly what happened with Max and Carlos , but also at the rear with Alpine and Charles Leclerc, and many other cars.”
“Now it looks like the tires are giving a real fighting chance on track, along with the new generation of cars, and it’s nice to see this happening.”
“Obviously going forward we are aware that we can improve, and we are working on next year’s tyres. But I will say that the first target [running close] has been achieved and that was really important for us.”
Mario Isola also explained that the fact that better fights can be seen on the track is due both to the combination of the new ground effect cars and to the new generation of compounds that degrade less.
And while he believes improvements can be made to balance the performance of the entire range of compounds, Pirelli’s F1 chief executive is pleased.
“Before, the car behind would start losing downforce, slipping and overheating the tyre, so obviously one of the keys to this not happening now is the new cars. It’s obvious that maintaining downforce helps the compounds.” .
“But also the new tires are working better. We know that sometimes the medium and soft degrade a little more than expected, but this is necessary, otherwise if you have tires that are behaving the same way at all times , there are no strategies.
“With a hard that is very consistent, a medium that is manageable and a soft that is maybe a bit too aggressive, we can have different strategies,” Pirelli concluded.
