Lotus boss Eric Boullier and now Ferrari’s Horse Whisperer column have attacked the change and Red Bull in particular for lobbying behind the scenes and in the media for a change in tyres.

Pirelli is caught in the middle and whatever changes it makes from here onwards it will be perceived by some fans as having affected the outcome of the championship.

However last night the FIA indicated that any changes to the specification could only be made for safety reasons, not sporting ones as it entered the debate for the first time. Teams are due to learn in Monaco what the essence of the changes will be and the indications are that they will be relatively minor.

Pirelli is at fault for going too far with the 2013 tyres and for making them a larger talking point than the personalities in the sport. People tune into F1 because of personalities; it’s about Prost vs Senna, Alonso vs Vettel, not about hard versus medium.

The mistake of this season was in moving the centre of pressure too far towards a technical topic and away from the world’s best drivers expressing themselves on the race track. That imbalance has turned many fans off and this been recognised at the top.

However the essential truth to remember when sifting through the messages coming from the teams is that F1 teams will only ever speak out of self interest.

For example, as the Horse Whisperer pointed out, Red Bull won the 2011 Spanish Grand Prix with four stops and made no complaints at all. On Sunday they tried to do three, were forced to make a fourth at the wrong moment and ended up missing the podium. A volley of complaint ensued from Red Bull and especially from the owner, Dietich Mateschitz, that F1 2013 is not real racing.

Likewise Boullier and Ferrari are desperate to keep the 2013 tyres as they are because they have engineered themselves an advantage.

It was the same in 2009 when some teams thought of the double diffuser and the ones who didn’t tried to ban it, or 2010 with McLaren’s F Duct, which received similar treatment.

The difference here is that the argument involves a third party, Pirelli, and is much easier to target a third party than it is to face up to one’s own problems.

Arguably Pirelli made a tactical mistake when announcing the changes this week; rather than discuss a desire to cut the ideal number of stops down to two or three, which panders to the lobbyists, perhaps Pirelli should have focussed on the need to solve the delamination problem which we have seen in the last two races on Ferrari, Mercedes, Force India and Toro Rosso cars.

The priority in making a change from Canada onwards is to ensure that the tread block stays on the tyre in all situations; whether the problem is caused by debris cutting the tyres, overheating or manufacturing issues. That has to be solved in this raft of changes.

But beyond that the task is to produce tyres that are slightly more durable, but maintain the same shape and profile as the original 2013 tyres and perform in a similar way, so as not to handicap teams like Ferrari and Lotus that had found clever engineering solutions.

This is likely to be the outcome; tyres that are no so significantly different. But as the subject of tyres is so little understood by most of the media and many fans, the truth is likely to get lost amid claim and counter-claim.

Whatever the outcome and the changes, there will be complaints and factions who believe that it has decided the championship.

The reality is that until the new tyres go onto the cars in Montreal, it will be impossible to say who has won and lost with the changes. In all probability what will happen is that the engineering solutions of Ferrari, Lotus and Force India will continue to work, but the wider operating window of the tyres and increased durability will mean a reduction in the margin of deficit Red Bull and others suffer. It will being them closer together, but with the tyre-friendly teams still at an advantage.

But we will have to wait and see.

Despite their mistakes, one has a twinge of sympathy with Pirelli for being caught out with this year’s tyres by not having adequate test facilities, as the teams cannot organise themselves sufficiently well to provide a test car for them to work with.

Last year they reluctantly agreed to allow a 2010 Renault to be used to test 2013 tyres and then when Lotus turned up this year with a car that was engineered to work well on its tyres, there were complaints that Enstone had benefitted from the tests.

Now we have such an absence of trust between teams that there is no test car.

The only workable solution is to have an extra day or two after certain Grands Prix where teams can run development tyres and the process can become functional again.

Remember that when Bridgestone and Michelin were competing there were three or four days of testing after most Grands Prix. Bridgestone had a test budget of $20 million for Ferrari alone.

The Horse Whisperer sees it like this, “Maybe the brain cells that control memory only operate selectively, depending on the results achieved on track by their owners.

“A classic example of this is the current saga regarding the number of pit stops. Voices have been raised to underline the fact that various teams, some of whom got to the podium and others who were quite a way off, made four pit stops in the recent Spanish Grand Prix, making the race hard to follow.

“It’s a shame that these worthy souls kept quiet two years ago when, at the very same Catalunya Circuit and on the Istanbul track, five of the six drivers who got to those two podiums made exactly the same number of pit stops as did Alonso and (Ferrari’s second driver) Massa last Sunday in the Spanish Grand Prix.

The Japanese company had its own team between 2006 and 2008, but during that time, it managed just one win – the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix with Jenson Button – and the manufacturer ended the project at the end of 2008, as the global economic crisis struck.

However, Honda has been lured back to the sport by a change in the engine regulations from 2014, with 1.6 litre hybrid turbo engines, which are core business for Honda, replacing 2.4 litre V8s, which are not.

“The new F1 regulations with their significant environmental focus will inspire even greater development of our own advanced technologies and this is central to our participation in F1, ” said the Honda president Takanobu Ito today.

“We have the greatest respect for the FIA’s decision to introduce these new regulations that are both highly challenging but also attractive to manufacturers that pursue environmental technologies and to Formula One Group, which has developed F1 into a high value, top car racing category supported by enthusiastic fans.”

Honda will need to supply a second team on their return to the sport and the word in the paddock at the Spanish Grand Prix was that Sauber is top of the list. But as Honda’s engines are likely to be subsidised – or at least highly affordable – while other rival engine supplies, particularly Renault, are expensive, there is likely to be a scramble among teams to get the second supply.

With the change in engine regulations from next year, there is going to be qute a shift around of engine suppliers with teams. Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn is meeting with F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone in Paris today to discuss Renault’s involvement in the sport amid complaints that its turbo engines are too expensive. Williams is believed to be looking elsewhere, while Toro Rosso is joining Renault to align it with sister team Red Bull Racing and Marussia is heading to Ferrari.

FIA race director Charlie Whiting told JA on F1 at the start of the year that manufacturers who are not supplying engines in 2014 will not necessarily be able to attend the engine makers’ Technical Working Group meetings – something Honda would benefit from if they were allowed to attend. Mercedes will be nervous about protecting its Intellectual Property on the turbo engines during 2014 when it is contracted to supply McLaren even though there will be Honda engineers embedded at Woking.

The partnership between Honda and McLaren in 1988 was the most dominant in Formula 1 history, with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost winning 15 of the 16 races between them. Between 1988 and 1992, they won four drivers’ and four constructors’ world championships together.

The company made it F1 debut in the 1964 German Grand Prix and secured its first win at the Mexico Grand Prix a year later before withdrawing at the end of 1968.

Honda returned as an engine provider between 1983 and 1992 and then started another stint with BAR in 2000. That outfit became the Honda team in 2006 but they quit the sport, handing the team to team principal Ross Brawn who went on to win the title with Jenson Button the following season in a Brawn-Mercedes.

Alonso and Massa found a good balance on Friday and felt that they had a good chance for the race and didn’t want to upset that.

According to Gazzetta dello Sport, the issue wasn’t that the new pieces failed to match expectations, it was rather that the rain in the morning limited the opportunities to evaluate them properly and the priority was to find a good balance on the delicate Pirelli tyres.

The updates used in Spain consisted of a new package of exhausts, diffuser and front brake ducts, to better control the temperature of the front tyres.

The work on the exhausts and diffuser was in order to improve the low speed mid-corner to corner exit downforce levels, which are important as they make up around 25% of the lap time. This is a big area for all teams at the moment, as is work to control the temperature of the front and rear tyres.

The new engine cover didn’t even get tried on Friday and stayed in the garage all weekend, while other parts will need to be tested further at future races, most likely Canada.

Alonso won the race, despite qualifying only 5th. He was able to use a great start, clever strategy and a fast race pace to claw his way to the front and drive away from the others. But he won’t always be able to do that – particularly not in Monaco so the first order priority is to improve their single lap pace for better grid slots.

This task is all the more pressing as it appears that not only are Red Bull superior in this area, but Mercedes have now taken three consecutive pole positions while Raikkonen’s Lotus outqualified Alonso for the second time in five races. As last year, fifth threatens to be the Ferrari’s default grid slot, unless something is done.

Ferrari’s dilemma now is how to improve the qualifying performance of the car Speaking after the victory in the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday Stefano Domenicali said, “The situation is quite clear; we don’t have to unbalance our car at the moment, but we need to do something about qualifying. We will have races where it will be much more difficult to overtake. Without unbalancing the fact that we have decent performance in the race, we need to improve the qualifying so that we have cleaner air in front of us.

“For me this weekend was important to understand what was the jump in terms of performance you could expect from the other teams (updates) because from now to the end of July you may see one or two big steps of development, no more. And then I would say some teams will be forced to try to start work on the new car because of the big challenge that it is.”

And of course the big unknown is how the Ferrari will fare on the revised Pirelli tyres from Canada onwards. JA on F1 technical adviser Mark Gillan believes that there is no reason to suspect that Ferrari’s good work in thermal management will go to waste when on the new tyres, but that it is likely that their advantage will be reduced over rival cars with less good thermal management, due to the larger operating window of the tyres and the increased durability.

On another note, Alonso said in the FIA press conference that he wouldn’t care if he finished second in every race for the rest of the season as long as he won the championship. Domenicali agreed with this sentiment, giving an indication of the team’s priorities.

Pirelli has indicated that they have been “too aggressive” with the construction of the 2013 tyres and will make changes from the seventh round, Montreal, onwards.

However against this backdrop, the strategy battle at the heart of this race was fascinating. And it showed that the teams who came out on top were the ones who had the best thermal management of the tyres and the clearest vision of how to execute their race strategy and who stuck to it.

Ferrari committed to four stops before the race began and likewise Lotus committed to three stops with the bulk of the running on the medium tyre, underlining their car’s gentle action on the tyres.

Other contenders, particularly Red Bull and Mercedes were washed away by not sticking to a clear vision of how to attack the race.

Alonso vs Raikkonen

In 23 years no-one has ever won the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona from as low as fifth on the grid, but Fernando Alonso managed it on Sunday, which tells the story of how much the Pirelli tyres have shaken up F1.

Alonso knew from studying the data from Friday’s long runs in practice that the car to beat on race day would be Kimi Raikkonen’s Lotus, as this had exceptional race pace and low degradation.

When Raikkonen qualified fourth ahead of Alonso, this made him the main target, even with Sebastian Vettel started ahead in 3rd. The long runs from Red Bull on Friday had shown that they were struggling with tyre degradation.

Ferrari’s assumption was that Raikkonen would three stop and that Vettel would probably four stop. So they committed to run four stops, with Alonso pushing hard in the second and third stints. They were right about Raikkonen, but not Vettel; this merely played into their hands as we shall see.

Lotus looked at the data and concluded that although a four stop race was three seconds faster on paper, it was also more risky because of the increased risk of traffic and of things going wrong in the stops. Lotus also gives away a second to Ferrari in a pit stop on average, they simply aren’t as fast. However Lotus was the only team able to do most of the race on used medium tyres. They found them faster over a stint than new hard tyres but with similar degradation.

Starting from the dirty side, Raikkonen lost the initiative to Alonso at the start and this was crucial to the outcome, as Alonso was able to stay ahead after the first round of stops, when the field opened out.

The Ferrari’s secret as a race car is its ability to push hard on the opening laps of a stint (see fuel corrected lap time chart below, Alonso in red, Raikkonen in black) without overheating the tyres or damaging them and Alonso’s second and third stints demonstrated this perfectly.

Look at Alonso’s superior pace on the laps after his first and second stops ie where the red line dips down around laps 10 to 13 and laps 22 to 24.

In his tight battle with Raikkonen, it was the second stint in particular where he set the platform for his win, by taking his lead over the Finn out from two seconds to seven seconds. When he came out of the pits after his fourth stop, he was eight seconds ahead of Raikkonen. So that second stint was decisive.

Raikkonen was also slightly unlucky to come out from his second stop behind Vettel, who was losing time to Alonso.

On lap 38, just after the mid point of the race, they were together with one more stop to make each. Alonso was on fresh tyres, Raikkonen on 12 lap old tyres. If the Finn had been able to hold him back for longer, or to stay with him once Alonso got past, then he might have had a chance to challenge for the win, but he didn’t quite have the pace.

Lotus would not have been any better off trying four stops as this would have put them on the same strategy as Ferrari but with slightly less pace, so three stops was the right way to go.

Red Bull get in a muddle

This was not Red Bull’s greatest Grand Prix from a strategy point of view. Vettel qualified third and had the advantage of track position over Alonso in the opening stint, but lost the race and finished fourth because Red Bull fell into the classic trap of Pirelli era strategy indecision.

Red Bull tried to do three stops, couldn’t manage it and were forced to stop Vettel a fourth time, which cost them hugely. The proof of this is that he was beaten by Massa. And his team mate Webber, who started seventh, finished just behind him in fifth place.

Ferrari undercut Vettel at the first stop to gain the track position advantage and then the Red Bull driver ran three laps longer in his second stint, losing a lot of time in the process, to Alonso, Raikkonen and Massa.

But the real problem stint for Vettel was the third one, on new hard tyres. He managed only to get to lap 39, which forced him to switch to a four stop, but as it hadn’t been planned, all the time lost by trying to run longer stints counted against him.

Could Mercedes have avoided their slide?
For the second race in a row, Mercedes slid alarmingly back from their pole position slot, with Nico Rosberg ending up sixth and front row starter Lewis Hamilton faring even worse in 12th place.

Despite knowing from practice that they had high tyre degradation, Mercedes went for a three stop strategy with Rosberg and he was forced to nurse the tyres, begging the question, could he – like Vettel – have done better if he had committed to pushing harder on a four stop?

In his case the answer is probably no, but not for strategy reasons.

The evidence suggests that the Mercedes’ geometry is such that the car generates excessive temperature in the tyre, which is what triggers its loss of performance over a series of laps. This would still have been the case even if they had divided the race into five stints rather than four.

All they would have done would be to add another 20 seconds for an additional pit stop. The strategists were hamstrung by the limitations of the car.

This is not an easy thing to fix; there are various devices around the brakes and rear wheels to control the temperatures by a few degrees, but not to control the kind of temperature spikes Mercedes is getting. The fact that this appears to be a recurring problem for the team on high energy circuits, like Barcelona, shows how difficult it is to know where to start.

Tyre Strategies, Barcelona

M=Medium; H=Hard; N=New; U=Used;

Alonso:MU HU (9) HN (21) MU (36) HN (49) 4 Stops
Räikkönen: MU MU (10) MU (26) HU (45) 3 stops
Massa: MU HU (8) HN (20) MU (36) HN (51) 4 stops

Vettel: MU HN (10) HN (24) MU (39) HN (51) 4
Webber: MU HN (7) HN (20) MU (36) HN (50) 4
Rosberg: MU HN (10)HN (27) HN (47) 3
Di Resta: MU HN (9) MU (19) MU (38) HN (53) 4
Button: MN HN (11 ) HN (28) HN (46) 3

Perez: MU HN (10) HN (23) MU (38) HN (50) 4
Ricciardo: MN HN (10) MU (24) HN(39) HU 51) 4
Gutierrez: MU MU (13) HN (28) MU (42) HN (54) 4
Hamilton: MU HN (9) HN (25)MU (36) HN (50) 4
Sutil: MU MN (8) HN (22) HN (36) MU (49) 4

Maldonado: MN HN (8) MN (20)HN (35) MU (53) 5
Hülkenberg: MU MU (8) HN (21) HN (34) HU(35) MU (53)

Bottas: MN HN (9) HN (25) MN (43) 3
Pic: HN MN (8) HN (23) HN (41) 3
Bianchi: HN HN (2) HN (16) MN (29 ) HU (46) 4
Chilton: HN HN (15) MN (30) HN(47) 3

The UBS Race Strategy Report is written by James Allen with input and data from several leading F1 team strategists, from Pirelli and from JA on F1 technical adviser Mark Gillan.

RACE HISTORY GRAPH

Courtesy of the Williams F1 Team

Note Alonso’s pace at the start of second and third stints relative to Vettel’s; also note the erratic lap times of Mercedes after first stint.

With no testing available – a significant part of the reason why Pirelli has struggled to get the tyres right this year – they will have to use a construction solution that has been proven to work in the past, rather than try something new.

JA on F1 technical adviser Mark Gillan was chief operations engineer at Williams until the end of 2012 and has a deep understanding of how the tyres work and what is involved in this change.

Here, with his input, is our analysis of today’s decision.

When Pirelli says the tyres from Canada will be more like 2012 tyres what does that mean?

The 2012 tyres were more durable than this year’s tyres, which suffer from high degradation. Pirelli has indicated that it will change the construction of the tyres to be more like the 2012 products.

The 2013 tyres have a different construction from the 2012 products, with a steel belt inside the tyre in place of last year’s kevlar belt. It is likely that this decision will be reversed with the revised tyres, as Pirelli moves back to a proven solution.

The weakness of the 2012 tyres was wear; typically the inside shoulder of the tyres would wear out and teams would run the tyre until there was no rubber left on the shoulder and then make a pit stop. However the teams understood how to manage them quite well by the end of the season.

For 2013 Pirelli tried to fix the wear problem by getting the contact patch of the tyre more reasonably positioned, but it seems that in changing the construction to achieve this they have gone too far.

Although the reason given for the change is that four stops is considered too many for a race and they would like to reduce that to two or three stops, there is also the safety aspect in light of the tyre failures in Bahrain and Spain. In changing the construction, they have obviously done something to affect the tyre’s integrity.

Which teams will be most affected by these changes?
Thermal management of the tyre is the key this year and teams like Ferrari, Lotus and Force India have prioritised this in their 2013 designs. All three have good aerodynamics, but they have engineered in a way to keep the tyre in its ideal operating window by a combination of a stable aero map, a mechanical package which is in sympathy with the tyre and a good set-up.

Red Bull has very good aerodynamic package, as it has for many years now, but inferior mechanical package and thermal management of the tyres.

These weaknesses assume less importance with the changes Pirelli is making, they are likely to increase the operating window of the tyres and increase the durability and that reduces the importance of the thermal management.

What challenges does a change of tyres seven races into the season present to the teams?
The knock-on effects of a change of tyre construction are considerable and this is a major headache for teams, especially as they are about to commit more wind tunnel time and resources to their 2014 designs.

It is unlikely that a change of construction can be made without this affecting the shape of the tyre and how the contact patch with the ground forms. When part of the tyre leaves the ground this changes the shape of the airflow to the floor of the car.

The teams have spent many months modelling this in the wind tunnel and in CFD and if the shape changes even by a few millimetres, this will have an effect on the way the front wing interacts with the tyres, and with the flow down the side of the car and underneath the floor. It will impact the aerodynamic balance of the car and teams that have pushed to get on top of that will suffer.

We are getting close to the time when the teams were hoping to move the 2013 model out of the wind tunnel and start devoting more time to the 2014 model. This change of tyres will complicate this for everyone. particularly for teams with limited resources, it will make for a real headache as they try to stay competitive in 2013 and not lose ground in 2014.

The Italian company blamed the lack of adequate winter testing in suitable climates for producing products this year that have fallen short of the standard required. They admitted in a statement this afternoon that they underestimated the demands of the current F1 cars on the tyres. Pirelli is conducting meetings at its Milan base to establish whether any compound changes are required as well.

The news will come as a blow to Ferrari and Lotus, which mastered the delicate Pirelli rubber in Spain last weekend to take the podium slots, as well as Force India, but will be welcomed by the powerful lobby led by Red Bull and Mercedes calling for more durable tyres.

Pirelli boss Paul Hembery said, “Our aim is to provide the teams with a new range which mixes the stability of the 2012 tyres and the performance of the current ones. As a company, we have always moved quickly to make improvements where we see them to be necessary.

“After evaluating data from the first few races this year, we’ve decided to introduce a further evolution as it became clear at the Spanish Grand Prix that the number of pit stops was too high. The Spanish Grand Prix was won with four pit stops, which has only happened once before in our history. These changes will also mean that the tyres are not worked quite as hard, reducing the number of pit stops.”

Also spurred on by the recent spate of high-profile tyre failures, Pirelli has decided to return to the kevlar belt construction of the 2012 tyres rather than the steel belt used this year, according to Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport.

It was telling that the TV coverage in the last two Grands Prix, produced by FOM, has broadcast numerous messages from drivers like Lewis Hamiton saying, “I can’t drive any slower” and engineers urging drivers to take it easy and protect the tyres. This has increased pressure on Pirelli and provoked a backlash in the media and among fans.

Having opted to be more aggressive in the 2013 tyre range, Pirelli is having to row back on that, citing the increased levels of downforce the teams have generated over the winter overstressing the tyres. Pirelli also blames the lack of a suitable test car for them to track test the products before introducing them. The 2013 range was developed by Jaime Alguersuari and Lucas di Grassi using a 2010 Renault.

“It was a combination of factors that have come together, “Hembery added. “We didn’t want to make too many dramatic changes, and we do not want to penalise those teams that have taken a design direction to look after the tyres.

“Equally, we had to do something to improve the situation.”

Ideally what Pirelli should aim to do is recalibrate the tyre to maintain the current pace but with slightly less degradation and less wear, to trim it back to 2/3 stop races.

The development tyre tested out in Spain at the weekend was very slow, almost 2.5 seconds off the pace and with very poor warm up, so that is not the answer.

But it is never desirable to change fundamentals part way through a season and inevitably some teams will gain and others lose from this, which could cast a shadow over the outcome of the championship.

Ferrari, Lotus and Force India are entitled to feel aggrieved as they have engineered their car around the tyres that were handed out to all teams in testing and at the start of the season, but there are warning signs that fans are starting to turn away from the current style of racing.

In making the change Pirelli acknowledged the link between perceptions of its F1 tyres and its road tyres and now participation in F1 might affect that,

“We’d like to thank all the teams for their continued and extremely valued support as we worked with them to identify the correct compromise between the pure speed that makes us the world leader in the Ultra High Performance sector and a global spectacle that is easy for Formula One fans to follow,” said a statement.

At one end of the spectrum the Mercedes was 2.3 seconds faster in qualifying than in 2012, while the Williams was a second slower than Pastor Maldonado’s pole time from last year.

But in the pits there has also been progress; Ferrari set the fastest stop on Sunday, a clear second faster than its best time last year (when it was again fastest) thanks to the many detailed changes like the new spoke pattern and detail around the wheel nut – which works for enhancing thermal management of the tyres and brake cooling system as well as to speed up pitstop times, with faster on-off access of the wheel gun.

Fastest pit stops, Barcelona 2013

Taken from the time the car passes the pit lane entry line to the exit line – this measures the contribution of both mechanics and drivers

1. Ferrari 18.471s
2. Red Bull 18.606s
3. McLaren 18.810s
4. Sauber 19.324s
5. Mercedes 19.352s
6 Force India 19.481s
7. Toro Rosso 19.498s
8. Williams 19.723
9. Lotus 19.743s
10. Marussia 19.830s
11. Caterham 20.734s

Fastest pit stops, Barcelona 2012

1. Ferrari 19.456
2. Red Bull 19.624
3. Lotus 19.777
4. Force India 19.867
5. McLaren 19.888
6 = Mercedes, Toro Rosso 20.059,
8. Williams 20.218
9. Sauber 20.381
10. Marussia 20.669
11. Caterham 21.275
12. HRT 21.471

Progress on track

It is always instructive at Barcelona to draw comparisons with times from last year to see how much progress a team has made. As the best all-round test of an F1 car, Barcelona is a good yardstick, especially as the teams know it so well from testing.

The picture from this year is fascinating.

2013 Qualifying vs 2012 Qualifying, Fastest car
Amount Faster
Mercedes 2.3sec
Force India 2.1sec
Marussia 1.8sec
Lotus 1.3sec
Red Bull 1.2sec (based on Q2 times, RBR didn’t run in Q3 2012)
Ferrari 1.1sec
Toro Rosso 1.1sec
Caterham 0.6sec
Sauber 0.2sec

Amount slower
McLaren 0.1sec
Williams 1 sec

A lot of the update work on the cars at the moment revolves around improving aero dynamics in low speed corners, particularly on corner exit. Low speed corners (up to 130km/h) account for on average 40% of the lap time. And around 60% of the time spent in these slow corners is spent on middle of corner to corner exit.

In other words around 25% of the typical lap time is spent in low speed corner exits, making it the most important single phase of the lap.

So you can see how this is where time can be found and why the exhaust blowing into the diffuser to generate downforce is so important.

The Mercedes and Red Bull were the best in the low speed final sector in Barcelona, featuring the chicane. The Mercedes had a 0.3s advantage over the field in this sector on Saturday and that bodes well for Monaco, which is all about low speed corner exit.

The problem for Mercedes is that it is overheating its rear tyres in the race. The car overstresses the tyre which is good for low speed corners in qualifying but is a problem over long runs in the race.

What F1 engineers are looking for with these cars and tyres is not peak aerodynamic loads, but having load at all points and a stable platform.

The plot below shows clearly the relative degradation experienced by Mercedes drivers in comparison with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso.

Alonso’s degradation is fairly linear (in red), showing that the car has the degradation under control, where the Mercedes is more extreme and peaky. The vertical axis is the lap times with faster times at bottom and the horizontal axis is the number of laps. Alonso’s five stints are clearly identifiable. He backs off in the final one, but note the Ferrari’s pace on the opening laps of the 2nd and 3rd stints. That the Ferrari can push that hard on the tyres and then also maintain linear degradation is impressive

Additional input: Mark Gillan, JA on F1 Technical Adviser

McLaren, who won the final race of last season with what was considered to be the fastest car on the grid, made major changes to their machine for 2013, while their rivals took an evolutionary approach.

As a result, they have dropped down the grid and currently lie sixth in the constructors’ championship, 102 points behind leaders Red Bull while Button is best placed in the drivers’ standings 64 behind leader Sebastian Vettel.

The team brought a number of updates to Spain but the team still struggled with Perez qualifying ninth and Button 14^th. Overall, the team were 0.3 seconds slower in qualifying than in 2012. That compares to Mercedes who were 2.1 seconds quicker while Lotus and Ferrari were generally 1.2 seconds faster.

In the race, the team actually achieved the same finishes as last year. In 2012, Lewis Hamilton finished eighth, ahead of Button. In 2013, Button headed Perez in the same positions.

Interestingly, Button finished 79 seconds down on the leader at the chequered flag in 2013, compared to Hamilton finishing 78 seconds adrift in 2012. Perez finished 81 seconds behind in ninth, compared to Button who finished 85 seconds adrift in the same position the previous year.

Button’s fastest race lap was 1.7 seconds slower than the fastest, set by Sauber’s Esteban Gutierrez, and 1.3 seconds off the best set by race winner Alonso. Perez, who did a four-stop strategy, had a best race lap which was seven tenths quicker than Button who did just three stops.

Button said: “It was a bit embarrassing for us because we are not doing a good enough job. We’ve got so much support from the fans. We are doing everything we can to get to the front.

“The formation lap was very slow for some reason but the leader can dictate the pace. It really hurt us in terms of tyre temperatures so the start of the race was tough.

“I got a bad start and dropped back to 17^th. I was in a whole world of pain as I couldn’t get any tyre temperature. Once we moved to the harder of the two compounds, the car felt much better.”

McLaren’s sporting director Sam Michael says the team’s problems are partly down to data from the windtunnel not correlating with data from the car on track. It is a problem similar to that which affected Ferrari last year and contributed to their disappointing start to the season.

“You have all these simulation tools and you are constantly trying to close the loop between them and trackside,” said Michael. “I guess with what McLaren have done this year, we took some big changes over the winter and some of those areas in those tools have shown weaknesses because they haven’t predicted thing properly.

“If you look at where our pace has been in the last couple of races, we’ve been about six tenths off in terms of race pace. If you were six tenths off in the 90s, you’d still come second or third.

“Now you come 10th so the game has changed. It tells you that the tools are better than they used to be but small errors will result in much bigger changes on track.”

More than 5,000 pedestrians are killed on roads across the world every week, according to the World Health Organisation. These fatalities make up a large percentage of the 1.3m killed on the roads every year.

The aim of the campaign is to give pedestrians a voice when traffic safety is concerned so the UN launched “Long, Short Walk”, an initiative that encourages people across the world to video or photograph their favourite walks.

The images and footage will be edited together to raise awareness that those in cars are not the only road users.

So ahead of the drivers’ parade at the Spanish Grand Prix, the likes of F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone, FIA president Jean Todt, Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, were joined by 200 school children for a short walk down the start-finish straight.

Spaniard Maria de Villota, who suffered a severe head injury and lost her right eye in an accident when testing a Marussia F1 car last year, was also in attendance, along with a number of team principals.

Todt said: “It is fitting that the world’s finest drivers and the teams and organisations behind them have come together to demonstrate that all road users, no matter whether they are at the wheel or on foot, should be protected and that every driver must be vigilant at all times, no matter how skilled.

“It is crucial that we protect pedestrians and the FIA is delighted that Formula 1 has embraced this initiative to help save lives in such a positive way.

“It once again demonstrated how motorsport can help draw attention to such a globally important issue. This fusion of sport and mobility to improve road safety is at the core of the FIA’s beliefs.”

A remarkable 77 pit stops were made during the 66-lap race with several drivers being told to lift off in certain corners to protect the high-degrading Pirelli tyres.

In an interview with Autosport, Mateschitz said his two drivers – Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber – were not able to push their Red Bull to the limit without ruining the tyres.

Mateschitz said: “Everyone knows what happens here. This has nothing to do with racing anymore. This is a competition in tyre management. Real car racing looks different. Under the given circumstances, we can neither get the best out of our car nor our drivers.

“There is no more real qualifying and fighting for the pole, as everyone is just saving tyres for the race. If we would make the best of our car we would have to stop eight or ten times during a race, depending on the track.”

Championship leader Vettel finished fourth in Barcelona, behind race winner Fernando Alonso of Ferrari, Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, saying after the race: “Our car is quick enough to match them [Ferrari and Lotus] any day.

“But if you talk about a race distance looking after these tyres it is a different game. The car is quick enough but there is something we probably do to the tyres that makes them wear more.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner agreed that tyres were playing too big a role in the results of races.

He said: “It’s too confusing for the fans. When we’re saying to Sebastian Vettel, you’re racing Kimi Raikkonen for position, but you’re not and don’t fight him, that’s not great. Pirelli are a capable company and they can get on top of it, but it’s a bit too much at the moment.”

Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery said the Italian manufacturer will make changes to the tyres.

“For British GP we will change our tyres again, whether we will do it with all the compounds I cannot say yet,” he said. “Certainly we will work on the construction.”

However, Hembery added that it’s a tricky situation for Pirelli because while Red Bull has been critical of the 2013-spec tyres since the start of the season, other teams are in favour of the current compounds.

“Lotus and Ferrari don’t want to change the tyres and we don’t want to be accused of wanting to make Red Bull won the world championship,” he added.