Big Takeover
Member
I see. So Pirelli also supplies the teams with scale tires for their wind tunnel testing. And apparently those had a relatively slippery surface that the real tires don't have (or perhaps have but lose quickly when they make contact with the road).
More like the shape of the tire under load is not what they expected. If they fixed it using "active undercarriage systems for the wind tunnel" (I'm guessing what exactly that means here), the squashed shape while turning, bouncing, or perhaps even on a cambered surface is not what they anticipated.
Speaking of camber, I wonder if Lotus' "active undercarriage, which enables them to be so tyre conserving" is some kind of active camber system to reduce contact patch on the straights. Just a wild guess.