Andrew Green: New tyres could lead to dull races

Force India's technical boss Andrew Green has warned that the tyre selections Pirelli has made for 2017 could result in "dull races". The rubber created by the Italian firm for this year has been designed to last longer and allow the drivers to push harder without backing off due to tyre wear, which has somewhat detracted from the spectacle in recent years.

Green, however, believes that the reduced number of pit stops and longer stints could actually hinder the sport and make the races less spectacular. Speaking to David Croft of Sky Sports F1, he elaborated on this.

"We're looking at a soft tyre now that can just about do a race distance around here in Barcelona, which is soft of unheard of.

"Normally winter testing in Barcelona is pretty tough on tyres, it's a tough track anyway and in the winter it's even tougher. So for us to be able to shod it with a set of soft tyres and do a race distance would mean we'll be doing one stop this year."

Despite his concerns, Green did suggest that as the season is still young, adjustments to the way teams approach strategies could occur across the year: "We do need to get into some representative temperatures and some different tracks, let's see how it pans out over the first few races.

"I'm sure it's going to get tweaked because from where we are now I'm seeing some quite dull races. This week, we're already picking tyres for the middle of the season so we'll need some sort of unanimous agreement between the teams or some top level decision that maybe they've overegged the tyres slightly. It's early days but around here at the moment, we're looking quite conservative."

Mason Hawker