Softer tyres wouldn't have eased the boredom

Pirelli do not believe that their decision to run with the newly designed medium compound tyre had much impact on the non-eventful European Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel may have run away with the 2011 Formula One World championship, but the exciting races that we've had throughout the season had previously helped F1 spectators to forget the dominance of Red Bull.

We've enjoyed exciting racing, with more overtaking manoeuvres and pit-stops than ever before.

Pirelli have taken a lot of the plaudits for the improvements of the Formula One spectacle in 2011, but in Valencia last weekend, Formula One served up yet another disappointing event and understandably everyone is asking why.

The Valencian track looks like it should tick all the boxes, a harbour side location which may lack the glamour of Monaco, but still looks wonderful for the television audience. It's in Spain, taking advantage of the popularity of Fernando Alonso and in the GP2 and GP3 races it produced some interesting racing, with a fair few overtaking moves, so why was the F1 race different?

Was it down to Pirelli's tyre choice?

'Having the super soft may well have created a slightly more interesting race, but I have doubts with the overtaking zones that it would not have changed a huge amount. It certainly would not have been as exciting as some of the other races we have seen.' Pirelli's director of motorsport Paul Hembery told Autosport Magazine.

The other problem was that even having a double DRS zone, the use of the driver enabled rear wing had limited impact on the racing, drivers simply couldn't overtake or get close to each other, which made the whole event pretty dull.

Hembery concluded: 'I guess we were all a bit bored because we have been so used to so much excitement this year. We get a race that is relatively straightforward and we start worrying, but we are going now to Silverstone which is a step back to the other extreme. It is a high-speed aggressive circuit.'