Multiple incidents during the Spa WEC round can be attributed to the difficulties of running on cold rubber following the pre-season ban on tyre heaters. gazzasportscars believes the move is laudable but there is also a clear flaw. ⬇️
I'm not sure I’ve ever headed to the Le Mans 24 Hours hoping for high temperatures and sunny weather. I’m no sun worshipper, and too much heat doesn’t make life any easier for a pasty-faced Englishman over the busiest week of my year. But this time I’m praying that the 24 Hours next month is a hot one. That’s not for my benefit, you understand, but for the sake of driver safety, the workload of hard-pressed mechanics, and the environment.
If you’ve already seen that moment then you’ve probably watched the race, so I hope you’ll understand my worries. If you didn’t tune in, I’ll just mention a couple of the incidents on cold rubber over the course of the three days of the Spa 6 Hours meeting. Hartley went off at the top of Eau Rouge in qualifying and, more worrying, Antonio Fuoco crashed his Ferrari on the kink on the old start-finish straight right after the pit exit during the race.
The dangers of running on unheated tyres weren’t suddenly thrown up by the weather conditions at Spa. They have been on the agenda since the beginning of the season: Ferrari driver James Calado, remember, was highly critical of the tyre warmer move after crashing in the Prologue pre-test at Sebring back in March.It disappeared from the radar to some extent because the first two races of the season were held in the sunny climes of Florida and the Algarve.
The gains just aren’t there to justify a situation that for now looks highly dangerous. The new policy might have already increased the emissions from the WEC paddock Tyre warmers are not part of the culture of North American sportscar racing and clearly teams and drivers are on top of running without them. I concede that there is a learning process going on in the WEC right now and we all have to admit that a lack of pre-heating doesn’t seem to be a problem in LMP2 where the cars, unlike in Hypercar, are running tyres that weren’t developed to run unheated.
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