The Secret of How Pirelli Recover Data From F1 Tires

Mario Isola of Pirelli explains how Pirelli recover data from F1 tires for this weekend’s Fifth round of the Formula 1 season. The Spanish Grand Prix at Catalunya.

Read the Original Article on Automoto

Mario explains;

The track at Catalunya has alternating areas of high and lower speed sectors. It has a rather abrasive asphalt with high levels of energy downloaded on the shell in particular on the left side. To cope with this Pirelli has chosen to use tires P Zero Orange hard and the P Zero White medium for this race. What do the Pirelli colours mean.

To detect the level of wear of tires Pirelli use the RTS (Pirelli Racing Tyre System), which uses a tablet pc and software to identity and recover data from each tire.

The first step in performing measurements at the end of each session finds the Pirelli engineers using a spatula and dryer to clean the tread surface to remove any dirt collected from the asphalt.

Then a tread depth gauge is used to measure the thickness of the rubber that remains in each of the six indicator areas on the tire cover. The gauge is directly connected to the RTS and when the engineer takes a measurement the T7000 screen graphically shows the profile of wear the tire has experienced.

Once all the data has been recovered the RTS system is able to provide every team with an estimate of the useful life of the rubber. It can then make a comparison with the average from other cars and a representative profile of the conditions of all the tires in use.

Key Point: This data is very important as it creates a base line from which the teams are able to develop a better strategy for the race. Vroom Vroom…..!

The Spanish Grand Prix at Catalunya is on 15th March 2013 Timetable . The race starts 13:00 BST 14:00 CET

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