Pirelli “flexible and ready to adapt,” says Hembery

Given the mechanical carnage in Jerez this week tyres have not received a lot of coverage, but nevertheless it was an important test for Pirelli as the company had its first chance to run with the new cars, and in both wet and dry conditions.

Pirelli also gave the teams a helping hand by providing a ‘winter compound’ designed to allow them to log miles in the cool of a European January. The fastest time of the week, Kevin Magnussen’s 1m23.276s on Thursday, was set on new mediums.

Pirelli F1 boss Paul Hembery has made it clear that the company is flexible in terms of what it has to provide this year, and will wait to see what happens at the Bahrain tests.

“The emphasis was not on tyres during this test,” said Hembery. “Instead the teams were simply trying to get an understanding of this radical new set of regulations and put the first kilometres onto their cars. With so much to understand about the new power units and aerodynamic rules, the teams aimed simply to increase their knowledge about the cars.

“The upcoming tests in Bahrain should allow them to focus on tyres a little more, having had two weeks to develop their cars and remedy any issues that have been identified at Jerez. We too are completely open, flexible and ready to adapt our tyres should the tests in Bahrain, where more meaningful running will take place, identify any need to do so.”

For the record, Pirelli says the longest runs achieved by each tyre were as follows:

10 laps on the supersoft compound
9 laps of the soft compound
17 laps on the medium compound
24 laps on the hard compound
23 laps on the ‘winter’ compound
26 laps on the intermediate compound
13 laps on the wet compound