Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough has explained the reasoning behind how the team use their Formula 1 tyres. Frequently over recent seasons, the team have headed into Sunday of a Grand Prix weekend with no new sets of tyres available, as defined by Pirelli. However, some tyre sets only have one lap on them, with the team being unique in following this strategy, despite rival squads and indeed Pirelli unsure as to why Aston Martin were persevering. But McCullough has now explained the rationale.
Aston Martin's tyre use
"We started off doing it for live pitstop practice," McCullough told media including RacingNews365. "We were the seventh or eighth fastest team, sometimes the 10th fastest team in pitstops, and one of the things that we realised is that it is really hard to practice a dynamic pitstop. "We can do a lot of other simulations, but when a car comes in hot, you have to get your gun onto the wheel, you have to get the jacks up, get the tyres off and on and off you go. "That was the real reason why we started doing it, and now we've actually taken ourselves to on average, the third best in pitstops. "That is the biggest drive, if we want good stops, good practice with a live car, it can make quite a big difference. "We're doing it at the end of every session. We also don't think that if you trundle around, it doesn't really hurt the tyre. "It maybe takes the top off them, but we don't think that's a bad thing."
Most read
