The end of the Pirelli test has also marked the end of the 2018 Formula One season, even if the focus of these two days was very much on the future, evaluating next year’s tyres.
Pirelli’s Head of Car Racing, Mario Isola, comments on the post-season tyre testing session which took place at the Yas Marina track: “The teams were able to get a useful initial read on the 2019 tyres during the two days of testing, with the entire range available, as well as all the 2018 tyres for comparison. All the teams were able to define their own run plans and mostly choose whichever tyres they wanted to test, so it’s not been easy to draw any immediate conclusions on track. We collected a lot of data, which we are just starting to go through now, and we will need to analyse this quickly because the compounds for Australia have to be decided in a week. At this time, we also aim to decide the compounds for the first five races of 2019.” – he explained, as reported by Pirelli’s official website.
“Initial feedback from the 2019 range is positive. In particular, the first important information we had from day one of the test was that the new compound 5 (equivalent to the 2018 hypersoft) is working as expected: similar to the 2018 hypersoft but with reduced graining from what we can see so far. However, Abu Dhabi is not a circuit that features particularly high speed corners, so this is an important factor also to consider. So far, we’re happy with what we’ve seen, and our intention is for these to be the definitive 2019 tyres. In theory we can still make some adjustments before the final homologation deadline on 1 December, but we hope not to do that. In the meantime, we’ll be studying the data carefully.” – Pirelli Head of Car Racing Mario Isola concluded.
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