F1 Pre-Season Testing of New Pirelli Tyres

F1 Pre-Season Testing of New Pirelli Tyres

4 February 2011 5,355 views No Comment

With pre-season underway in the new Formula One season, Pirelli also had their first official test of 2011 with the teams as last year they were made the exclusive tyre supplier to F1 teams. After previous tests that were held with Toyota, this was the first time that teams were getting hold of the Italian rubber.

Pirelli’s new PZero Tyres

After all the previous tyre development carried out, Pirelli brought their latest evolutions for the teams to use whilst providing each team with a Pirelli tyre engineer for the rest of the year – such is the amount of research and development that is needed in being a F1 tyre supplier.

In terms of Pirelli vs Bridgestone (previous F1 tyre supplier), Pirelli seem to be still learning and doesn’t quite appear to be on the level of Bridgestone, however, this has been rebuffed by many as Pirelli are said to be following a breif of providing tyres that degrade much quicker than the Bridgestone equivilent. We discussed something similar in the Canada race which saw high tyre degradation but provided an exciting race.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented:

“First and foremost, we’ve enjoyed perfect reliability over the three days, which has enabled the teams to get on with their test programmes at a crucial time of year as they launch their new cars. Naturally, they’ve all been running a very wide range of different configurations and set-ups here, so there’s no point looking too closely at the times. What’s more important is that the feedback we’ve received from the drivers and teams so far has been very positive, and it’s been a great pleasure to work with them all. It’s early days, but we believe that the teams have started to see now that our tyres are quite different to what they had before. In line with our brief, it’s no longer going to be possible to run virtually an entire race on one set of tyres, so I think everyone will appreciate how our PZeros can help to provide even more exciting races in the future.”

http://www.pirelli.com/press/2011/02/03/successful-first-group-of-test-for-pirelli-in-valencia/

Importance of Tyres in F1

Button told BBC Sport:

“It doesn’t matter how much grip and downforce you’ve got,” “if you can’t put it down on to the track. It will come down to who can make the tyres work best.”

The tests are set to continue over February with the season starting in March. It will be interesting to see how pivotal the four peices of rubber will be during the season.