Ferrari’s Giacomo Tortora comments on the tyres for the 2017 Formula 1 season. Ferrari’s responsible for Vehicle Dynamics pleased with Pirelli partnership .

Giacomo Tortora, a specialist in aerodynamics and simulation studies, moved to Ferrari back in 2011, when Pat Fry was the technical director of Ferrari. Since then, Giacomo Tortora has become one of the key figures in the Maranello team and remains an important part of Mattia Binotto’s current staff, being the Scuderia’s main responsible for Vehicle Dynamics.

The Italian engineer was recently interviewed by Rai Sport and commented on the development of the new tyres, which will have to go through corners up to 40kph faster than last year and with 20 per cent more downforce:

“We have worked very good with Pirelli, and also with Red Bull or Mercedes. I have to say that unfortunately there is a lot of negative publicity in Formula 1 when it comes to the partnership between Pirelli, the International Federation and the teams, but this has been a great example of collaboration: the testing programme for the development process of the tyres was something that everybody agreed upon and already back in 2015 we had a clear idea of how we could use the mule cars in order to test the future tyres.” – Giacomo Tortora said, as reported by Rai Sport.

The important aerodynamic rule changes which will be introduced for the 2017 Formula 1 season means that the new F1 cars will have a more aggressive look and most importantly will be up to five seconds faster than last year: “The improvement will definitely be there and is going to consist of several seconds, but for the moment it is impossible to say for sure how many seconds. In 2015 the mule cars had a better performance than the actual cars on the grid, but now the changes are even more complex, so there is definitely some uncertainty regarding the situation for next season.” – Scuderia Ferrari’s responsible for Vehicle Dynamics added.

Everybody is anxious to find out what the other teams have managed to achieve in terms of performance, but Giacomo Tortora says that Ferrari is focused only on its work: “Of course we are curious to find out what our opponents have done, but at this moment there are so many things to plan and organize that we are only looking at our own development activity.”