Kamui Kobayashi commented positively on the new Pirelli tyres after he tested them for the first time in Abu Dhabi on Friday.
The Sauber driver, who completed 83 laps of the Yas Marina circuit on the first day of the two-day test, said the tyres performed well, once his team had made the appropriate changes to the car set-up.
“I think the tyres from Pirelli are well made,” said Kobayashi. “We tested how to work with these new tyres and how we need to further develop our car for them, learning in which way they are different to what we were used to running. The tyres were quite consistent. Only in the morning I struggled with tyre wear, but after we made some set-up changes this wasn't an issue any longer. It was a very interesting test for us.”
Technical director James Key agreed with the verdict of his driver, congratulating Pirelli on their efforts in developing a Formula one tyre.
“It was a very productive day,” he said. “The baseline set-up was not too far away to begin with. We made a few changes and found a reasonable balance for the car fairly early. We ran our programme as planned with shorter runs to conserve tyres and consistency and a longer run in the end. We feel we learned a lot about the way the Pirelli tyres are behaving and responding to different set-up changes. We have to hand it to Pirelli, the tyres are already on a good level and we feel it was a very positive day.”
Kobayashi will resume testing on Saturday morning, before handing the C29 over to new team-mate Sergio Perez. This will be the final day of testing for all teams until 1st February 2011.
