Lewis Hamilton has his say on the 2018 tyre situation
F1 News
Lewis Hamilton has made it clear that he is strongly against the proposal of replacing this year's tyres with last years. F1 teams are set to meet with the FIA and Pirelli to discuss this and if 7 of the teams vote for the change then it will come into place in August. Hamilton thinks that this would be detrimental to Formula 1 and put an end to competitive racing.
“Tomorrow morning they have a meeting with the tyre group,” said Hamilton to RaceFans.net, “We are all united in that so hopefully a driver will be in there. He doesn’t have to say anything but if they’re going the wrong way we [can] say ‘actually, no, that’s not the case’.
“Because I heard, for example, they’re trying to bring back 2018 tyres which were worse than [this] year’s tyres.
“Last year you had to manage the tyres to a temperature which means you have to do more lift-and-coasting, you had more blistering, it was a lot worse. You couldn’t do, for example, what I was able to do in the last race, or even in Montreal, where I was able to push behind Seb [Vettel]. You couldn’t do that on last year’s tyres, particularly the thicker-gauge tyres.”
Mercedes struggled on last years tyres and have had great success on this 2019 compound. Other teams are desperate to return to last years rubber as they think it will even the playing field out a bit.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of this vote and if a change is made to the tyres that are used.