F1 News
Norris agrees with Verstappen: "No driver wants it, basically"
- GPblog.com
Lando Norris agrees with Max Verstappen and believes there will be many crashes to watch when Formula 1 starts banning tyre warmers. Currently, the plan is to take to the track without pre-heated tyres from 2024.
No more tyre warmers from 2024
On Friday, Verstappen revealed that he disagrees with the decision to ban tyre warmers from 2024. Since 2019, tyre warmers have gradually been set to increasingly colder temperatures. This year the maximum temperature is still 70 degrees Celsius, but from 2023 it will be only 50 degrees. Tests with next season's temperatures were already carried out in Austin and this did not please the drivers.
Verstappen said there will be many crashes to be seen when the tyre warmers disappear and Norris concurs with his rival. Moreover, the conditions in Austin were perfect according to the Briton. "This was like the best possible conditions to have these tyres: super-warm, hot track temp, high-speed first sector to get the temp in," he said at The Race.
"And they were not nice. So easy to front lock, so easy to rear lock, completely unpredictable. Imagine going to a much colder race track, or if it’s a little bit damp or something," Norris continued. According to the McLaren driver, every driver will crash once due to cold tyres. "No driver wants it, basically."
Drivers come into action
The way the cars are made in 2022 mean that racing with cold tyres is not really possible. It is a big difference from a Formula 2 or Formula 3 car, for example, according to Norris. "We’ll have discussions about it, between all the drivers and the GPDA," Norris concluded.