Interview: Paul Hembery

Paul Hembery is one of the main men when it comes to Tyres in F1. He was one of the driving forces i securing the F1 contract for Pirelli to supply tyres, and currently oversees all aspects of Pirelli's operation at a race weekend.

I had the chance to ask some questions about Pirelli in 2012, the differences and what he thought of their debut year in 2012.

You entered F1 in 2011 as their tyre manufacturer, how tough was it in that debut year?

PH: “It was definitely tough, but we expected that and welcomed the challenge. You don’t enter Formula One if you’re expecting an easy time. In many ways though, the really hard part took place during 2010, before we started our first season. That was just down to time: from running on a track in private testing for the first time to our first group test was just four months, and from then it was only another three months to our first grand prix, in Australia. So we had to cope with a massive technical and logistical challenge, building the most extreme tyres in motorsport and recruiting the very best people in the sort of time frame that gave us no margin. By the time we got to the start of the season though things were actually a lot easier, as most of the initial hard work had been done and the infrastructure that we needed was in place. We’re satisfied with what we’ve achieved so far and are very proud of our people who made it happen, but the nature of Formula One is that you’re never completely happy: you’re always after the next improvement. And in that respect, we’re certainly no different to anyone else.” 

(c) Pirelli

If you look back on 2011 as a whole, what positives did you take away from it?

PH: “We took away loads of positives: I think it’s fair to say that the season went better than even we had hoped. We saw more overtaking than has ever been seen in any other Formula One season before, so I think we can be satisfied that we fulfilled our remit fully and helped to improve the spectacle of the sport. We’re happy with what we achieved in 2011 but now it’s up to us to build on that season and improve our product further.”

Your tyres really spiced up the racing, was that the main aim or were there other objectives you wanted to set too?

PH: “The directive that we were given by the teams, the governing body and the promoter was to encourage overtaking in order to guarantee at least two pit stops per race. Of course that’s not an easy task, as it’s far easier to design a tyre that will last for 1000 kilometres than 100 kilometres but that’s the challenge we stepped up to and that was the main objective. Leaving that aside, internally we had the objective of enhancing the profile of our brand and underlining Pirelli’s reputation as the world leader in the Ultra High Performance sector.”

Why did you change the tyre marking colours for 2012 and how did you decide on the colours to use?

PH: “The only changes that we made to the tyre colours themselves were minor ones: we introduced the green for the intermediate Cinturato and moved the blue colour from intermediate last year to full wet this year. All the other colours stay the same. What we have done though is enhance the visibility of the colours so that they stand out more. We’ve done that through the use of more prominent markings that will be easier to recognise. It’s actual quite a complex piece of stickering. As for how the colours are decided, it’s a process that goes through the whole company to reinforce a number of key messages. The P Zero Silver tyre, for example, is now also a road car tyre that prioritises durability as well as performance, like our hard compound F1 tyre, while the Cinturato Green tyre highlight our green performance range, such as the P1 Cinturato and P7 Cinturato.”

Can you explain the differences between the 2011 and 2012 rubber?

 PH: “Generally speaking, all the compounds are softer across the board, although we’re keeping the same designations as last year: supersoft, soft, medium and hard. However, the 2012 hard tyre, for example, is much closer to last year’s medium compound and so on. These are some of the quickest tyres that we have ever produced and they are definitely more biased towards performance. In spite of that, the degradation rate has actually been improved, and we’re still aiming to see between two and three pit stops at every race. The gaps between the compounds are also much closer, which should lead to some interesting race strategies.”

What can we expect from 2012 in terms of the tyres, will it be much like the opening rounds of the 2011 season?

PH: “I certainly hope so: keeping the racing exciting has been one of the guiding principles of our design philosophy. The 2012 range of tyres will probably be a bit less of a surprise to the teams than our tyres were last year, because they have more of an idea of what to expect from us now. But the 2012 tyres are different enough for the teams to have to re-learn our range to some extent, so we’re hoping for plenty of action-packed races once more.”