Formula 1 Must Find A Solution To Its Wasted Tires Problem

Latest stats from the 2024 F1 season highlights F1 still has an issue with too many tires being wasted

While Formula 1 continues to make good strides in increasing its sustainability, one of the most evident sources of wastage plainly still needs addressed.

With the goal to decrease environmental effect being all about marginal improvements rather than offering a silver bullet solution, it is fairly astonishing that F1 finds itself left with so many unusable tires over the course of a season.

The truth of this predicament revealed in an info paper that Pirelli handed out on Thursday outlining some fascinating figures from the 2024 season - which included the fact that F1's tires cumulatively traveled a distance of 334,942.175 km across 65,534 laps.

Tucked away within the data were some fascinating facts linked to the number of sets provided — and notably how many ended up not being called into action at all.

Pirelli claims it gave teams will a total of 8016 new sets in 2024 – which was broken up into 6100 sets of slicks and 1916 of wet weather rubber (1428 inters and 488 wets). Of this amount, 2718 sets were never utilized — which is roughly 34% of the whole supply.

Some of these were rain tires that were never necessary, but there were a good handful slicks that also never saw the light of day.

Pirelli maintains that 935 sets of slicks – barely little than 15% of the total taken to races – were mounted to rims and never left the garage.

Furthermore, 948 sets of slicks (15.5%) completed between just one and three laps — being utilized either just for qualifying or in quali simulators in practice.

The quantity of wholly unusable tyres is pretty eye-opening when considered in the perspective of all these tyres effectively being lost resources on two fronts.

First, there is the subject of effort and resources, in terms of making and then needing to destroy and recycle these sets.

Then beyond that there are transportation issues to take into account too based on flying this rubber all the way across the world for free.

It is little wonder that Pirelli itself underlined in its document: "The issue of more efficient tyre usage during the race weekend remains on the table."

Finding A Solution

The issue of wasted tires is something that Pirelli has been pushing hard on in previous years, and changes have already been made for 2024.

This happened through the implementation of a 'strip and fit' strategy for extremes and inters – meaning that tyres that were mounted during one race may be removed and replaced for the subsequent. This means that roughly 3500 fewer tires required to be produced last year compared to 2023.

Reality implies that it will be difficult for F1 to ever end up in a scenario where there are no wasted tires, but it is evident more can be done.

On the rain tyre issue, consideration might be made to changing F1 to simply having a single type of wet tyre.

It is quite evident in F1 right now that the present performance dynamics of the inter and the extreme produce a scenario where there is a lot of waste.

The extreme is supposed to answer difficulties of aquaplaning in particularly poor situations – yet the tire is so seldom used because, by kicking up so much water along with the diffuser, cars never drive in such horrible weather.

Pirelli's 2024 data underlines the problem. Intermediates were utilized for a total of 5.84% of the overall distance traveled by teams; the extreme was merely 0.57%.

Having a single wet tire to cope with the range of circumstances that run from damp to the point where cars no longer race would be an easy victory for cutting back on tyre manufacturing. On the slick problem, it is certain that there may be some sets that are only used for three laps or so because of qualifying.

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However, decreasing the amount of tyres unusable altogether might be done by new sports laws, like restricting teams to utilize particular compounds in certain sessions.

F1 experimented the Alternative Tyre Allocation (ATA) at two races in 2023 - cutting the number of sets provided to each driver down from 13 to 11. The regulations mandated drivers to utilize hard tires in Q1, mediums in Q2 and softs in Q3.

But the plan did not obtain the backing needed from teams to become the standard from the start of this year. There were worries that the ATA curtailed running in practice too much and also provided an edge to the faster teams who were better on the tougher compounds in qualifying.

The ATA was ruled out for adoption and the concept of a decreased allocation has since drifted away from the spotlight.

Pirelli believed that this was a squandered opportunity. As President of F1 and vehicle racing Mario Isola remarked at the time: "The decision to discontinue this format, for me, was not the right one.

"I believe that if the direction for the future is to reduce the championship's carbon footprint, we have to accept to lose something."

And as Pirelli's recent data reveal, this is a problem that obviously needs some fresh attention.