McLaren sporting director Sam Michael hopes Pirelli does not go too conservative in its 2013 Formula 1 tire selection as he reckons it would hurt the show.
The Italian tire manufacturer will alter all its compounds for the 2013 season, having promised it will make life easier for the teams. F1 teams had a tough time understanding the tire compounds in the first half of 2012, which led to an exciting opening to the season.
Michael thinks it would be detrimental for F1 if the 2013 rubber was a lot more predictable than in the past season.
"Teams do have a better understanding of it, and drivers understand how to drive them better," said Michael when asked if 2013 will be more predictable. "But it depends what they do with the compounds. The race was better when it was like that [more unpredictable].
"It wasn't unfair, it was down to who could understand and manage. That's what we do with everything. It's like saying someone's come up with a better diffuser. I actually didn't have any problem with what was happening with the tires. I thought it was good. I hope we don't go too conservative."
Although Michael admits some of the one-stop races were exciting this season, he feels tires that degrade faster will always help the spectacle.
"Those two or three races that were one-stop, they were fantastic races," he said. "But they weren't fantastic races because of tires, they were fantastic races because a lot of things happened.
"Three of them in a row had high potential for being boring races; they weren't because of other factors. I hope that we can maintain the sort of exciting racing that we've had for most of this year and not allow that to diminish."