Reading: Tyres Problems Return to Haunt Brawn

Ross Brawn fears his team’s tyres-warming ‘curse’ has returned, despite earlier optimism that work on the car had cured the problem.

Both Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello struggled to get sufficient heat into their tyres in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix.

Before the Belgian Grand Prix, Brawn admitted the poor performance shows how much more work his team needs to do before it can feel comfortable with the situation.

“It was the curse of the tyre temperatures again,” said Brawn. “We were struggling to get the tyres to work, and obviously those teams that managed to get the tyres to work made a very good step.

“With Jenson particularly, we really struggled with the tyres again. On Friday it didn’t look too bad, but we just slipped off a little with tyre temperature. Our curse has slightly returned - not as bad as it could have been. On fuel, with a longer run it’s not bad. For qualifying we struggled.”

Brawn believes that Button’s recent struggles, having been edged out by his team-mate in recent races, can be attributed to his smoother driving style.

“He’s inherently quieter on the tyres,” he said. “Normally that’s an advantage but in these circumstances he struggles a bit more. He’s quite a smooth, gentle driver which is normally a benefit. But when we are on the edge of getting the tyres to work, he seems to struggle a bit more.”

Alex Kapadia, Operations Team

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.