F1 Tyres

Fl Tyres

Sir,

May I with due modesty agree with everything you wrote in your September editorial on contemporary n tyres, except when you suggest that it should be permissible officially to flag in “all drivers who are running on incorrect tyres”. Surely even the “aces” of the circus must be left some judgement of their own; balancing the risks of running on not ideal tyres against the certain loss of time at a pit stop and pitting their meteorological intuition against that of any outside observer. The solution you suggest would probably have lost James Hunt his rightly deserved victory at Zandvoort as the Clerk of the Course there, with his better knowledge of local weather conditions would almost certainly have judged that Hunt was driving on “incorrect” tyres. Likewise, at Silverstone when Pace, Hunt and Fittipaldi were “tiptoeing round on ‘slick’ tyres on a wet track” in the middle laps. A Clerk might well have flagged them off, thereby changing the entire complexion of this race.

For the good of the sport, let us hope that Goodyear and the authorities concerned will take up your other eminently sensible suggestions and the similar plea made in this month’s edition of your French equivalent Sport-iluto. At the same time they might try to do something about the puncture problem which so spoilt this year’s German GP. Tervuren, Belgium MICHAEL JORDAN