Max Verstappen clinched his third Formula 1 world title in last Saturday’s Qatar sprint race, then took his 14th grand prix victory of 2023 the following day. That all sounds rather predictable and perhaps it was, but an unexpected tyre issue and strong McLaren attack made the Qatar GP more interesting than some of Red Bull’s wins this season.
This was not exactly how Pirelli would have wanted to spend the F1 race weekend preceding the announcement that it will remain as the championship’s sole tyre supplier until at least 2028 (see p6). Instead of sitting comfortably on that news, it had to work with the FIA to ensure that there would be a Qatar GP at all in 2023, such was the concern over the tyres being able to withstand repeated, sustained impacts on the high-speed Losail International Circuit’s newly installed ‘pyramid’ kerbs.
This was F1’s biggest tyre drama since Indianapolis 2005. It was also a contest in which four drivers were physically unwell, and many more close to being so, such was the strain placed on their bodies by the heat, which did not really drop in the night-race setting thanks to rising humidity as darkness took hold, and those rapid corners.
Pirelli’s Friday night analysis of tyres that had done more than 20 laps in the weekend’s sole practice session had revealed that tiny separations in the sidewalls between the topping compounds and the carcass cords had started to crop up. When they were cut open, Pirelli could see that repeated impacts between the tyre sidewalls and the 5cm-high pyramid-shaped
