Formula E may have to consider upping the tyre allocation for teams after concerns were expressed by some teams and drivers that practice sessions might feature very little running.
Free Practice sessions have been extended from 30 to 40 minutes this season but the tyre allocation has remained the same despite the all-weather Hankook tyres now being much softer than the predecessors used in the first two seasons of Gen3 competition.
The new racier spec of Hankook’s showed significant degradation in recent testing at Jarama, although this has to be caveated by the fact that the Spanish venue has a particularly high macro of asphalt that means its coarse nature is notorious for degrading rubber over long runs.
The present allocation for teams is two full sets (four fronts and four rears) of tyres per race, and three sets (six front and six rears) for double header events. This season a special ‘tyre parc ferme’ will also be mandated where all tyres will come under the control of the FIA. Teams will be able to access tyres 45-minutes before track action.
The new tyre was mandated to help improve laptimes and particularly to improve traction and overall grip levels to assist the relevance of the Attack Mode power boost under the 350kW peak, which now includes an active all-wheel-drive element to the cars.
This new package will transform the sporting element of attack mode - eight minutes in two hits - into a guaranteed overtaking opportunity, effectively making it relevant again after two seasons where it has been ineffective for exploiting the extra 50kW of power.
But the offset to that will be increased degradation of the rubber meaning that with just two full sets for two 40-minute free practice sessions, 12-minutes of group qualifying, then potentially three duel sessions followed by an approximately 45-minute race, teams are likely to opt to keep free practice running to a minimum and save rubber.
“It's still a little bit difficult to really have a clear vision on this,” Envision’s Sebastien Buemi told The Race last week.
“It's true that the tyre degradation with those new tyres in Jarama seems to be higher than last year. But of course, we don't know the tyre deg on a street track, which we know will be a lot less and it's hard to say whether it will be too much and whether we should ask for another set, or whether it will be okay.
“I guess we would need two or three tracks to really have a clear vision on that, but at the end of the day for me, as long as it is the same for everyone I don't really mind.”
Maserati MSG’s Cyril Blais reserved some judgement on the topic saying only that “there are ongoing discussions between Formula E, the FIA, Hankook and the teams and we understand that there are a couple of potential solutions on the table but until a formal decision has been made, we don’t want to speculate further".
The Race reached out to the FIA regarding the possibility of extra tyres being taken to races this season and a spokesperson said: "It is important to remind that the tyre quota in Formula E is reduced for some reasons, specially for the implications it has on the championship's carbon footprint to carry more sets of tyres.
"In the past few months we have proposed solutions and discussed in the Sporting Working Group the possibility to carry over tyres from one event to the following but for different reasons it never had the necessary alignment and agreement of all the stakeholders on the way this carry over should be done."
How Hankook has Handled Tyre Questions
Hankook came in for plenty of questioning for its ultra-hard tyre for Formula E ‘s first two Gen3 seasons in 2023 and 2024. But in fairness, it was only supplying what it had been asked to supply by the official tender which it won and executed for the third iteration of Formula E’s rules sets.
It became clear very quickly that the rubber was ultra-conservative and the drivers were privately quite disparaging of the product which one driver told The Race in 2023 would “survive an entire season of punishment” such was its rigour.
That durability made the tyres inert in terms of using under the extra 50kW of Attack Mode power meaning that any significant traction was impossible to use the power for overtaking. This in turn helped produce a pack racing phenomenon of Formula E competition which was created in turn by the usable energy co-efficient used for different types of circuits.
This contributed to stalemate races if the usable energy was not cut significantly. This was seen most noticeably at the Circuit Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City which saw little overtaking and ‘follow the leader’ events in 2023 and 2024.
Now the new Hankook tyres are a racier option with drivers now required to manage the peaks in heat cycles and feel the grip and manage the subsequent degradation more. In effect it is returning to a normal racing situation where drivers have a more tangible feel for the rubber and how to allocate it over a distance.
“I would say the main difference is the grip level, which is completely different compared to the years before, so it's much higher,” Hankook’s chief engineer Thomas Baltes told The Race in Jarama.
“The peak is a different and so it's more challenging, I would say, for the driver, because it's what we've heard from the driver that they like it, but it's now up to the driver more to work with the tyre, because the tyre has a memory."
Baltes’ colleague, Formula E project manager Mike Choi, backed that up by stating that the development work on the new rubber has provided “pretty much a combination of the balance” since Hankook has “loosened the stiffness of the compound on the tread to make up the balance of the tyre, we have removed the enforcement patch on the sidewall to match the performance”.
The Race revealed last month that material from the sidewalls of the tyres has been removed making the rubber much more liable to degradation through long runs and race scenarios, particularly with the extra push of the all-wheel drive.
