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i was just thinking due to the 1 tyre per race rule there has been a few punctures and why hasnt any f1 team thought about using the runflat technology.. they use it in rallies.. this can help save races and also can avoid heavy accidents
I think that weight increase is the answer. Having heavier wheels than competition for whole 19 races is worse option than to risk a puncture or two during whole season. Great loss of performance (lost race) is what follows after a puncture with or without run flat technology.
This could be brought in by FIA as a safety regulation. USGP would have been an entirely different matter if this technology was implemented in F1. Rather than smashing rear first to the wall the toyotas would have come in and changed to tyre. It would still be risky to puncture a tyre but the result wouldn't be driving with three wheel off the road.
I think that the tyre failures we see in F1 are not suited to run flat technology. Tyres tend to receive large cuts or carcass failures, this sees the tyres strucuture fail totally. the road or rally type of puncture is generally brought about by a small hole in the tread, leadign to a loss of pressure but the tyres strucuture remains in tact.
Having run flat tires in F1 would cause a lot of problems. The unsprung weight would skyrocket astronomically. In NASCAR, they run an inner liner in some races, and the weight of just the wheel is almost 80 pounds (40 Kilos). Of course, in an F1 application it would be substantially less. But it would still be a lot. If such wheels were added to the car, performance would definitely suffer a lot. The complete suspension system would have to be rebuilt with this extra weight in consideration. Acceleration and braking would be substantially delayed, by a large factor.
But then again, this goes back to the assumption that having just one tire set per race would reduce costs. I wonder how much in monetary value McLaren lost when the wheel caused the suspension to collapse in Kimi's car? No tonly the cost of parts replacement, but tht epotential loss of the World title. And in Indy, how much wil the teams suffer as a direct result of that fiasco? And the tire companies test just as much, maybe even more. It's no secret Ferari have tested, and tested, and tested because of their problems.
Run flat technology is a very nice thing, but maybe in this scenario, impractical.
Also the run flat tyres have much stiffer side walls, and with the reliance on side wall pliability as suspension travel in current designs this would also require longer dampers/damper stroke.
