GreenBkk.com Formula 1 | Pirelli tyre wear 'quite big' - Kubica

Pirelli tyre wear 'quite big' - Kubica

Robert Kubica struggled for balance at Valencia © Sutton Images

Robert Kubica believes the new Pirelli tyres will require a delicate touch as they degrade at a quicker rate than the old Bridgestones.

The Pole got his first run in the Renault R31 at Valencia on Wednesday and, despite a few reliability problems, completed 104 laps with the fifth fastest time. He tried both soft and medium compound tyres and said his initial impression was that degradation was quite high.

"Let's say they have quite big degradation so it will be very important to manage them better and maybe change a bit of the set-up in order to make them last longer and extract more performance from them."

Pirelli has specifically targeted a weaker tyre in the hope it will make racing more exciting and result in different strategies

Kubica also said the Pirelli's had dictated the car's performance and that on the idiosyncratic Valencia circuit he had some concerns about the car's balance.

"[The balance] is difficult to judge because in the end we have so many things and the tyres are dominating the car balance and car behaviour, so it is very difficult to make any comparisons," he said. "Feeling wise it's not perfect, actually feeling wise it's not so good. But on the other hand Valencia is a very different track to the others and often the cars are not behaving right here but they are behaving much better on the grand prix tracks. So I hope this will be the case and we won't have to worry too much about today's feeling.

Alongside the new rubber, the FIA has introduced moveable rear wings and FOTA has agreed to reintroduce KERS to further improve the spectacle. Kubica said all the changes would take some getting used to, but so far Renault's new systems had been reliable.

"Another good thing from today was KERS and the rear wing, both were working very well and we did 100 laps operating it without any problems," he added. "So that is something positive from today. The rear wing works good and is quite a powerful tool. [It's] a bit distracting because in many occasions you have to activate it at the same time [as KERS] and it takes a bit of concentration or attention away from the driving. So it's very difficult to combine perfect driving with perfect operation of those two things, at least on the first day."

Credit: ESPN F1 (espn.com)