Brawn unsure if tyre issues will return

Ross Brawn admits he is unsure whether or not the BGP 001 will experience the same tyre temperature struggle in Belgium that had began to derail its championship push before Valencia.

The championship-leading outfit, having opened up huge title leads following the first seven races, struggled to get its tyres into their correct operating range in Britain, Germany and Hungary – three races in which the team scored just a single podium finish.

However, the 30C plus air temperatures that were a constant throughout the European Grand Prix weekend meant the team had no such issues, which allowed Rubens Barrichello to claim its seventh win of the year.

But with far cooler conditions expected in the Ardennes region of Belgium, as is usually case, for this weekend’s race, Brawn said he couldn’t be sure the tyre issues wouldn’t return given it has had no running in such weather since Hungary.

Asked if there was a risk its situation could revert to how it had been before the summer break, he said: “Yeah, we have got to try [and resolve it].

“It’s a paradox isn’t it: you work most of your time to try and produce a car that’s easy on tyres, makes them last and can do all the normal things.

“And we’ve now got a situation where it’s hurting us and with no testing to go out and scan things, check things, do things, to see what happens in a range of tyre pressures, settings and downforce.

“So there is any number of things in testing you can evaluate and look at, but it’s so difficult over a race weekend.”
While the team had fallen well short of its early-season form in the three races before last weekend, Brawn believes the tyre problems masked the improvements it had been making to the BGP 001 through aerodynamic revisions.

He says further upgrades packages will be introduced for Belgium and Singapore next month; where it will hope low temperatures don’t restrict its car’s potential.

“Well I think they were all pretty good,” he said.

“That again was the frustration that, hidden behind this problem we had, there were some quite useful upgrades to the car.

“New floor, new wings, you’ve seen the bits on the sidepods – and they all got lost in the problems we were having.

“But now we have got the tyres working they have come back again.

“So we’re quite pleased on all the numbers, all has stacked up on the aerodynamic side, when we put the changes on we saw the improvement, but with the overriding issue of tyre temperature it didn’t come through.

“We have got some more modifications for Spa, we have got an update for Singapore, so it is all coming along.”

Source: ITV