Oliver Panis: Tyre situation causing F1 team orders

The worst thing about Pirelli's approach to 2013 is the teams' new tendency to impose team orders.

That is the view of Olivier Panis, the former grand prix winner who now mentors French countryman and Caterham driver Charles Pic.

'Tyres' has been arguably the loudest buzzword of the 2013 championship so far, with control supplier Pirelli taking a more extreme approach to degradation.

Panis, 46, admits he can see why some teams and drivers are frustrated.

"It's very difficult to find yourself in a situation where you have a good balance, good grip and then you find yourself three seconds slower within a few laps," the former Toyota driver told France's sports.fr.

"On the other hand, it was probably only what Pirelli was asked to do.

"More or less they were required to do it for the show, so it's difficult to blame them."

The result, at least for now, is that drivers are racing around trying to make their tyres last, rather than pushing for the final tenth of a second.

Panis said: "I do think that everything will be better managed by the teams after four, five grands prix.

"What I don't like seeing now is the sort of thing that happened in Malaysia.

"You don't want to see teams asking their drivers to slow down just so they can finish the race," he added.

About the author

Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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