F1 2024 speed gains now “beyond expectation”, says Pirelli

Pirelli says speed gains being made by Formula 1 teams are now “beyond expectation,” as it becomes mindful about the impact on tyre loads.

During a season when the grid has started to make some solid gains with their 2024 cars, recent grands prix have highlighted that the progress being made by squads is much greater than anticipated.

This has been highlighted again in Abu Dhabi with Lando Norris’s fastest time from practice of 1m23.517s already just shy of Max Verstappen’s pole position effort from last year of 1m23.455s.

But the step up from 12 months is clear, with Charles Leclerc’s fastest FP2 time from 2023 being 1m24.809s. The speed increase in FP1 year-to-year was 1.7 seconds

Pirelli’s F1 chief engineer Simone Berra admitted that the current cars were now “very fast” – which meant loads were greater on tyres than predicted.

“The last races, we have seen even an even higher increase than expected, and we have seen very high loads, especially from two or three teams,” he explained.

“From the simulations, we normally have one for the end of the season and one for the middle of the season for the year, and nobody thought to have these kind of loads. [They are] basically beyond expectation, I would say.

“So it’s interesting how much they are evolving with the cars, honestly, because we thought that at some point, they [the teams] would reach sort of maximum level of performance.

“But there are still some higher loads to gain and some performance to gain. And we’re seeing in the last races, for example, that Mercedes has improved a lot. It’s very interesting.”

The below table shows how the pole position times from last year compare to this year which shows how much the lap times have evolved.

* wet qualifying
 
While the gains have ramped up this year, Berra is…