Ferrari allowed to use tyre ovens?

[Mendel]

Tyre ovens seem to have helped ferrari lately to achive better temperatures for their tyres for the one lap qualifying.

However, rules quite clearly say that the only tyre heating device allowed are the tyre heating blankets with resistive elements.

Other teams have protested the Ferrari behaviour and fia apparently feels that the Ferrari tyre ovens are legal since they put the whole tyre, with the heating blanket and all, to the oven and hence they are using the blankets to heat the tires and the oven just heats the blankets which is nice and legal.

Either that or they are claiming that the tyre heating ovens are indeed blankets.

 

[epicstruggle]

this is yet another reason im glad i gave up on the sport a while back.

epic

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?PO_ID=33243&PO=33243

 

[Crisidelm]

One may also argue that the regular "blankets" aren't really blankets.
It seems to me that it's getting really paranoid out there in F1 world...

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well the main difference is that a blanket only heats the contact area of the tyre. Put those same blanket components into a metal box, and you end up with a tyre oven that heats the surface of the tyre, the sidewall, and the wheel rims. Quite different, and if tyre ovens are now legal, I expect to see all the teams using them.

 

[cthellis42]

Was there... um... a reason they decided to fruitify the spelling? "Racing tire" and context or the like just couldn't cut it anymore?

 

[Mendel]

The curved metal boxes work by heating the wheel rim as well as the tyre, but the inside casing is understood to consist of the same electrical heating equipment used in conventional tyre blankets.

"electrical heating equipment" as in resistors... in a metal box... That's like soooo not an oven.

Was there... um... a reason they decided to fruitify the spelling? "Racing tire" and context or the like just couldn't cut it anymore?

I think the british say tyre and the americans say tire... or might as well be the other way around. 8) I'm too tired to be sure (duh!)

edit: I think my first guess was correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyre_(disambiguation)

* Tire, or the outer part of a wheel on vehicles. The spelling tyre is generally considered Commonwealth English, the equivalent American English spelling being tire.