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Q: With burnouts on the formation lap, presumably you’re trying to get the rears to the optimum temperature that your clutch bite point is dictating, and tire pressures as well. How accurately can you sustain that, and how are you measuring that optimum temperature?
PS: Well there are a couple of things here. You must remember that rubber is an insulator, so if you do a burnout you get very high surface temperatures but actually trying to get that through to the core of the tire is quite difficult.
If you want to heat the interior of the tire, you need to do it by working energy into it. So in actual fact not spinning the rear wheels but getting good acceleration, cornering loads, get the core temperature up. Spinning the wheels gets the surface temperature up. You need a combination of both to get the best starts but we’re a little limited by engine temperatures and things like that. So depending on the temperature of the day, cooling configuration, we decide before the formation lap on Sunday morning what the drivers can do – how many burnouts, where they can do them. It’s all part of the pre-race briefing.
Q: Having Fernando Alonso back in the team, what’s that like from the tire warming point of view on the formation lap…assuming he’s not running off the road and almost hitting the wall like in Barcelona!
PS: I was going to say, if there’s one word, it’s “scary”! Just looking at the data from some of that tire warming is quite amazing. If it was you or I, I think we’d feel like we were in the middle of an accident.
Q: He does look quite graceful to it, there’s a lovely balance to it…
PS: Oh yeah, he’s completely in control of it. I know the Barcelona thing went slightly wrong but he is generally very well in control.
Q: …and what can you do about the front tire temperatures? How much can you keep those up on the formation lap?
PS: Not a lot. Obviously there it’s just internal energy, you can’t lock to wheels to get surface temperature. You’ve got to get the brakes warm too, and they obviously warm the tires because they are warming from the inside out, through the wheel. So it’s a balancing act to get it all right.
Q: How accurately can you predict the new tire usage of your opposition? What they’ve got left, what they’ll go into the race with?
PS: Very accurately, we knew absolutely.
Q: So I guess you’re going to tell your friendly media I guess on Sunday morning!
PS: Yeah, not a problem, I like to share information – the more they know, the better!
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