Newey: Our car was too good for the fragile 2013 F1 tires

The Newey Designed Red Bull excels when the tires can keep up

Red Bull technical chief Adrian Newey admits that the 2013 Formula 1 season fell into his team's hands after Pirelli's mid-season tire change.

Despite Sebastian Vettel's eventual domination of the world championship, Newey felt the team was in a close fight until Pirelli returned to its 2012 tire construction for the second half of the season.

"There was no guarantee that we were going to come out with a good car this year, and everyone has been chipping away at it," Newey said. "It is the fifth season of this band of regulations — which is an ever-tightening band to work in.

"I think we saw at the start of the season it was very tight. Ferrari started off very strong and Mercedes came on very strongly, and certainly going into August we were feeling that this was going to be really tough. And then I think we made some small improvements to the car, Pirelli also had to go back to the 2012 tires which seemed to suit the car better and it suddenly fell into our hands."

Newey acknowledged that the original 2013 Pirellis had held Red Bull back.

"The tire change certainly helped us, probably more than some of our competitors," he said. "Our performance advantage has tended to be in high-speed corners and straight-line braking, when you are putting maximum load into the tires. So you then put on a tire that is fairly fragile and not able to cope with high loads, and it stands to reasons that you will be less able to take advantage of it." More at Racer.com