We've come a long way from 2011 when Pirelli first entered the sport, 3 championships, over 72,000 tires, and 10 failures later we are here. Just to recap, what has happened: in 2011, the Championship was dominated by Sebastian Vettel, who finished no lower than 4th that season excluding DNFs. So, in a stroke of absolute, inexplicable genius (sarcasm) Bernie Ecclestone. decided to spice things up by telling Pirelli to make tires that degrade faster than they should. Last year, it was ok, the teams got by, a couple of races were unfairly dictated by tire degradation, but it was fine. The title came down to 3 points, but Ecclestone was still not content so he decided they had to be worse. Pirelli didn't have much of a choice since being the supplier to F1 is huge for any tire company. Now here we are.
So, now we've recapped, what's going on now? Well they've decided to substitute the steel-banded rear tires with kevlar banded ones. Short background on kevlar, it's used in bulletproof vests because it's extremely tough and flexible. The only issue is that kevlar doesn't conduct heat as well as steel, so the operating temp is 10 degrees Celsius higher than the steel's. The only issue is that F1 cars are rear-wheel drive, so it's tough to heat up the fronts and not the rears. To counter this, teams might put brake bias more towards the front, meaning the front brakes get more load than the rears, which could cause lock-ups and increased braking distances. Or, they might alter tire pressures accordingly.
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