Sebastian Vettel was one of the few leading race drivers to attend the recent Silverstone tyre test, and he now admits that he didn’t learn very much.
Race drivers were only allowed to try the new tyres, and not work on car developments.
“I think testing is always useful,” he said today. “Obviously the test last week was very limited in what we could do with the cars, so we probably didn’t learn that much – we couldn’t really change anything on the car, it was all about tyres. I think the circumstances were quite special in Silverstone, usually it’s never that hot. But it was still interesting.
“As I said we couldn’t do that many adjustments. We basically just put new tyres and fuel!”
Vettel doesn’t expect to see too many changes to the status quo this weekend.
“I think it was just to get a first feeling. The tyres don’t seem to be that different, which is good, because we haven’t asked for different tyres, we have asked for tyres that are safe.
“Therefore it’s difficult to know what to expect here, but I don’t expect it to be a massive change. I would be surprised if all of a sudden teams are struggling that didn’t struggle before, or the other way around.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Seems like in light of Vettel’s comments here, people around the paddock should really rethink their line that Merc learned a lot from their test with Pirelli in Barcelona.
Because we are supposed to take words from Pirelli/Mercedes at face value? How do we know the two tests (three-day secret test vs. one-day public test after going through a sh*tstorm) were conducted exactly in the same way?
The qualifying results for Monaco this year were a Mercedes front row and both Red Bull’s on the second row. Hungary is basically Monte Carlo without the walls. However, for the Principality Pirelli brought the super soft and soft compounds. For Budapest Pirelli have reverted to last season’s Kevlar internal soft and mediums………….and high temperatures are the weather prediction for the weekend!
My punditry skills (always wrong) are at a complete loss for predicting a qualifying and race out come. Thoughts?
Yes it is tricky, I guess we will know a bit more after Q3…