Because that car had become obsolete and rather irrelevant in its characteristics MichaelN - F1 development goes so fast and is so costly that it would require a huge design team and factory to have a car that offers relevant data on track.

The FIA and pirelli already work with the simulation data teams provide them up front, but since not even the teams can judge their own cars development while they are working on it, to predict it for most of the grid AND be able to build a car (which would take half a year, so you would be guessing some year and a half up front) would be complete guesswork.

Do we have an engine monopoly if someone makes a bad engine?

Well, we sorta do. They all build the same spec as prescribed in the rules. No-one can go and build something significantly different.

I agree with you and the engineer. Bought some Ohtsu yonks ago (wife is Japanese thought she'd be impressed I found some Japanese tyres), but was completely disinterested).Locals didn't know much about them (few tyre sellers said they're OK but don't wear well), but they were dirt cheap and they ordered them in for me.
Went pretty much went where I pointed it wet or dry and stopped "on demand" , didn't lose traction or skid , suited my driving style and local conditions I guess. Then re-launched here as Falken. Still worked well but prices went a bit silly. Forget brand loyalty or pretending to pull the visor down. Bit of experimentation and ended up with Yoko's (out of Philippines I think) and happy with them . So whatever floats your boat.

Even better, stop using old dogs on ice as well

You might find more using 'microplastic', which seems the most common in describing the environmental impact of tyre manufacturing and wear. This is one that looked at both MPs and PFAS: 'Fate of road-dust associated microplastics and per- and polyfluorinated substances in stormwater' by Biplob Kumar Pramanik and others.

Thanks Jay. I think once mounted they can't be utilised another time, so off to the recyclers.
I was getting confused watching live timing and seeing number of tyres used column in FP 1,2,3 & quali and thought it's a lot wondering if they reused some if things were going well, or not so well and save for race .
It's still a lot until the lights go out and it's go! go!go! (somewhere)

Interesting note about MotoGP; wasn't aware Michelin had some issues there. Like you say, they're doing very well in endurance racing and obviously also had the better of Bridgestone after a few years in F1.

Most road tyres from the major manufacturers (and usually their subsidiaries) are indeed on par, with minor difference one way or another. For example, Bridgestone and Vredestein all season tyres are usually prefered in countries with mild but wet winters, whereas Continental and Michelin usually get the nod when frequent but non-permanent snow is likely.

Budget tyres, though, can add a lot of meters to braking distances and should be avoided whenever possible.

Why do we always end up disappointed with their choices?

Expectation problem, I'd say…

@davedai

On the official F1 site, it says 13 sets of tires per team per weekend, plus 3 wet sets + 3 inter sets. 16(rounds, prior to Qatar) x 20(cars) x 19(dry+wet total) = 6,080 total sets of tires MAXIMUM. Now whether the teams used all the tires is another matter and I unfortunately don't have further information.

Well that's just the way the cookie crumbles🥴
Mercedes Benz
Kitchen sinks
Mop flops etc etc

mog, I do recall a tyre engineer some time back mentioning to me that he thought that, in reality, the consumer grade tyres coming from most of the major manufacturers were actually not that far apart in terms of performance. In his opinion, the perceived differences in performance were often exaggerated by expectation biases on the part of the buyer, often as a consequence of what they were conditioned to expect based on advertising.

We are, to some extent, seeing that here with the way that some individuals here talk about their own perceptions of tyre performance and how emotional biases have, to some extent, influenced their choices. Individuals here talk about how, for example, they believe that Michelin is great because of their perception of how the tyres perform in the World Endurance Championship.

However, if you were to go over to MotoGP, Michelin has faced frequent criticism over the performance of their tyres for years. For example, a particularly strong criticism that started last year was over the strict high minimum tyre pressures Michelin was insisting on, with the riders complaining that the front tyres tended to overheat so rapidly when behind another rider that the tyre pressures tended to skyrocket and cause the tyre performance to drop off rapidly - does that sound familiar as a complaint?

If you bias your opinion towards the WEC and the way that Michelin is portrayed there, you would think that they are a wonderful manufacturer. However, if you were to bias your opinion towards MotoGP and how Michelin is portrayed there, you'd think that they were a terrible manufacturer.

It's exactly the same company that's involved in both cases, but you'd likely develop very different expectations of how good or bad their products are likely to be based on those series and interpret the behaviour of their tyres in different ways as a result.

No answer for you Jay. But I would like to know how many tyres in total across all teams were used prior to the start of the GP.
I know this weekend was off kilter but Japan or any recent will do.
Not all teams have blah blah, a number like 500 even before the race.

Kinda feel sorry for them as they were the only choice really so they’re stuck with another 3 years of being bagged and not really being able to do anything different given the desire to have inbuilt deg.

Indeed, it's important to keep noting that - unlike some increasingly seem to claim - the 2021 floor regulations were not changed to slow down Mercedes after their dominant 2020 but rather introduced at the suggestion of Pirelli because they feared their tyres would not be able to stand up to a projected increase in downforce for 2021.

Since the 2021 season was supposed to be the first of these new regulations, but those were delayed due to the covid-19 pandemic, there was (apparently) no option to make better tyres for just the 2021 season.