Paul Hembery is expecting a stronger showing from the Scuderia Ferrari outfit in 2016, although the Pirelli boss does not believe it will lead to a championship triumph for the Italian outfit.
Speaking at last month’s Autosport International Show, Hembery was asked about his hopes for the 2016 season, and spoke about Ferrari and the new Haas F1 Team in particular.
“[I’m expecting a] strong Ferrari showing,” said Hembery to The Checkered Flag. “They had a good year last year coming on from one of their toughest seasons, and they were the only team to come close to Mercedes during the year.
“Certainly the noises coming out of Maranello are that they feel they can be competitive, I’m not sure whether that will translate into a championship victory but maybe more individual race victories setting up for 2017, which should be a year that they are focused on.”
Hembery also spoke of the importance of the American market and the new-for-2016 Haas F1 Team, who he believes will provide a lesson for any new team coming in to the sport should they do as well on track as they hope to.
”Also Haas coming in – they’re aiming for the midfield and that will be interesting to see a new team come in,” said Hembery. “If they do perform that well, maybe that’s a lesson for the sport on how new teams that come into the sport should approach it.
“Clearly having a US based team is also very positive and brings interest for the newest market. Though of course we need the Austin Grand Prix to take place.”
With the new tyre choice rules coming in for 2016, Hembery believes it may lead to some unexpected results to happen, at least in the early stages of the season when everything is less certain and less normalised.
“Maybe at the start of the season some of the tyre choices will enable some new and different results to come through that maybe we didn’t see last year,” said Hembery. “It became a bit normalised towards the end of the year.
“Of course with any technological change with time people tend to come closer together, we had the same with the V8s at the end of their development cycle the performance levels were remarkably similar. So this should be another step towards seeing closer racing.”
