Pirelli has formally confirmed that Pedro de la Rosa will join the company as test driver, replacing Nick Heidfeld.
The news originally came out last week via a speech from the company boss, much to the surprise of the Spanish driver, who had only just been dropped by Sauber and had not yet completed his contractual arrangements. That process has now been finalised.
“I’m really pleased to be joining Pirelli,” said de la Rosa in a statement. “Tyre testing is something that I have always enjoyed as it is a very big challenge, especially in Formula One. The information you can get from telemetry and sensors is valuable, but nothing replaces the individual feeling of a driver with new tyres so I hope I can be a real asset to Pirelli.
“There’s not a lot of time left and a huge amount of work to do, but I’m very much looking forward to it and I am sure that our collaboration will be a success. A lot of useful work has been done already and now we have the opportunity of taking it forward.”
Pirelli says that last week’s test at Monza with Romain Grosjan concentrated on defining the construction tyres, with the Frenchman running 30-40 lap stints.
Pirelli’s Motorsport Director Paul Hembery said: “Romain jumped in to do some durability testing and did an excellent job. The objective of this test was to confirm the structural specification of the tyres we will use for the first time at the test in Abu Dhabi, and we now move on to working on our rain tyres and compound definition.
“Moving forwards, we will also be joined by Pedro de la Rosa, who has the benefit of having the most recent Formula One experience and is a renowned tester. So far, everything has gone according to plan and we’re pleased to report that we are only about a second per lap off the times of our predecessors, which is a great achievement.”
Adam Cooper F1 