Pirelli is confident that Formula 1 teams are now much better prepared for a move to more aggressive tyre compounds in 2013 than they were at the start of this season.
The Italian tyre manufacturer is going to switch to new constructions and even softer compounds next year in a bid to improve the spectacle and ensure teams are still challenged.
The tyre plan has prompted talk that the new season could reproduce the unpredictability that was witnessed at the start of the last campaign, when there were seven different winners from the first seven races.
However, Pirelli’s chief technical officer Maurizio Boicchi thinks that teams will not face such difficulties in dealing with the new rubber, as he is adamant that they have learned enough this year about how best to cope.
He thinks the fact that the final races of 2012 became straightforward one-stop events shows how much progress the teams made in understanding how to get the best performance from tricky products.
“During 2012, more or less all the teams learned much better how to use our tyres,” Boicchi told AUTOSPORT.
“One of the key criteria that improved their consistency was the fact that we have seen and measured much less [wheel] spinning from them – which means they have learned how to manage this phenomenon.
“It [wheel spin] is terrible, as you wear the tyres fast, heat them up and they degrade very, very rapidly.
“This was something more and more taken into consideration by the teams. You could see cars during free practice with infra red measurements on the tyres in order to have a point-by-point reference on the circuit for the temperature on the surface of the tyres.
“It was one of the most important pieces of information on the tyres that relates to wheel spin – and it made all the difference.
“We believe a lot of things have moved in this direction, and what we would like to do in 2013 is to come back to be a little bit more aggressive in our compound choice in order to introduce more pitstops and strategy for the teams.”
Boicchi, who believes the 2013 tyres will be faster, says another factor that will help the teams is the fact that they got to try out the future rubber during practice in Brazil.
“They got their first feedback which was important, as normally at the first tests in February we have such awful temperatures that it is more or less impossible to have clear information,” he said.
“It is also hard to get a clear perception from the teams then too, because often they are focused 100 per cent on car development – they worry more about the aerodynamics than the tyres.”
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