How do you conserve tires? They keep rotating?

Question

Got into Formula 1 recently, and they constantly talk about “conserving tires”, but the tires are always on the road? It’s always spinning? Do they just mean go slower??? Why would you want to go slower in a race?

In: 2

Answer 1

Yes, basically they just go slower, especially in corners. You do it so that you don’t need an extra pit stop and/or can defend against overtakes of the adversaries. Overtakes in F1 are more about braking later/accelerating earlier and less about raw top speed, so it’s more important to have good tyres in order to have better grip than going faster.