Teams and drivers happy with Pirelli progress

Just five days after the Abu Dhabi GP preparations for 2011 got underway with the first of two days of general Pirelli testing at the same venue.

This is the only chance for teams and drivers to sample the new rubber before they launch their new cars next year. Every team fielded a 2010 race driver except McLaren, who relied on tester Gary Paffett, and HRT, who used future Williams man Pastor Maldonado. In addition Paul di Resta shared Force India duties with Adrian Sutil.

Each team had four sets of tyres today, although any that were not used can be carried over for tomorrow. Times were relatively unimportant, although for the record Felipe Massa was fastest for Ferrari. The Brazilian ran a chart topping 94 laps, a figure matched by Paffett.

Drivers and engineers have been universal in their praise for Pirelli. Although they have been careful not to say too much at this stage – and comparisons with Bridgestone have been studiously avoided in any official statements – it’s clear that everyone is relieved that the Italian company has reached a good level some 15 weeks before the start of the 2011 season.

Here’s a sampling of what some key people had to say:

Felipe Massa: “It was a positive start to begin to understand the behaviour of the Pirelli tyres. I felt at ease right from the start and there were no unpleasant surprises. We tried two different types and acquired a lot of data which will be useful for the Italian company to develop the tyres still further for the start of the 2011 season: on the hards, there were some difficulties over a long run while the softs worked well both on the very first lap and also after they had done a larger number of laps.”

Sebastian Vettel: “I think the tyres behaved well, better than expected given the short amount of time Pirelli have had and they’ve done a good job. Pirelli are obviously in the middle of their development and what we used today is not what we will race with, but it was a good start. The circuit was in good condition and we had blue skies all day.”

Nico Rosberg: “As a team, and particularly the engineers, we did a really good job to be well prepared for this week’s Pirelli test with the work back at the factory and the support here at the track proving invaluable. That really helps once you get the tyres on and we were able to focus precisely on the set-up direction and have found various improvements. It’s a good start however there is obviously still some way to go before we get the best out of the tyres.”

Rubens Barrichello: “We’ve had a busy schedule today with plenty of work to do. This morning we evaluated aero set-up, before going for performance runs in the afternoon. This was our first session with the Pirelli tyres and I found it quite interesting. My initial impressions are positive and I look forward to working with them again tomorrow.”

Robert Kubica: “It’s always interesting to test new tyres and today was our first chance to try the new Pirellis and work with the new tyre engineers. We all know how important the tyres are for the behaviour of the car and so we concentrated on evaluating both compounds and understanding as much as we could about the tyre characteristics. Although we didn’t do a massive number of laps, we have still learned a few things and it feels good to have begun our relationship with Pirelli. Because we stopped early, we have saved some of the tyres for tomorrow, so it will be a busy day as we continue learning.””

Kamui Kobayashi:  “I think the tyres from Pirelli are well made. We tested how to work with these new tyres and how we need to further develop our car for them, learning in which way they are different to what we were used to running. The tyres were quite consistent. Only in the morning I struggled with tyre wear, but after we made some set-up changes this wasn’t an issue any longer. It was a very interesting test for us.”

Ross Brawn (Mercedes): “Today has been very important for the team to start building our relationship with Pirelli. Whilst a lot of details remain to be understood, we feel that we have gained an initial understanding of the operational requirements of the two compounds that we have and have highlighted some important areas for investigation and improvement. We have been lucky to have been able to get exposure to the Pirelli tyres at a track with which we are now very familiar and in conditions that we will not experience again until the final test of the season in Bahrain. Michael watched today’s proceedings with great interest and is looking forward to experiencing the tyres for himself tomorrow.”

James Key (Sauber): “It was a very productive day. The baseline set-up was not too far away to begin with. We made a few changes and found a reasonable balance for the car fairly early. We ran our programme as planned with shorter runs to conserve tyres and consistency and a longer run in the end. We feel we learned a lot about the way the Pirelli tyres are behaving and responding to different set-up changes. We have to hand it to Pirelli, the tyres are already on a good level and we feel it was a very positive day.”

Alan Permane (Renault): “The morning went well and Robert was reasonably happy with the car balance, although we made a few changes during the day to improve it. Our initial impression of the tyres has been positive. They were working well with good grip and no warm-up issues. Unfortunately we had to stop early because we had a mechanical issue with the car and we preferred to save the tyres for tomorrow when we’ve rectified the problem.”

Mike Gascoyne (Lotus): “We had no mechanical issues on the car and managed to complete our full programme in 88 laps. The car was ballasted up to the 2011 weight limit for the day and we ran a series of fundamental tests within the parameters we could change with the tyres and in the afternoon we found some clear and useful setup directions for the engineers to work on. We set our quickest lap of the day at the end of the session on a pretty worn set and all of the data gives us very useful information that we will carry over to tomorrow when Jarno is back in the car for his first taste of the new Pirelli tyres.”