Pirelli have revealed the dates of their tyre testing program, with all ten Formula 1 teams helping to develop the tyres for the 2019 season.
Testing can be a very important part of Formula 1, with teams often taking any chance possible to gain information on the next year’s tyres.
To ensure that teams aren’t able to gain an unfair advantage, each test will be run “blind”, meaning that teams will have no idea which compound they’re running and won’t be allowed to test any development parts. That’s not to say that teams haven’t been accused of gaining benefits from testing though.
There were claims that Sebastian Vettel‘s testing of 2017’s tyres gave Scuderia Ferrari an advantage at the start of the season.
Vettel completed 2,000km of testing on the 2017 tyres, whilst Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport ran just 250km, with Pascal Wehrlein doing most of that.
This season could be different though, as Lewis Hamilton already has at least 114 laps of the Paul Ricard circuit in September last year.
Pirelli’s Mario Isola commented on the announcement saying that teams have responded positively, and that each team has been able to
“We’ve defined the calendar with all the teams.
“It is good that we have been able to distribute one dry session to each team.
“We offered to test to all the teams, and all the teams replied in a positive way.
“Talking about wet tyres, we have less sessions, we have three teams who were also available to test on wets, and we allocated wet tests to these three teams.”
Wet tyre testing will take place at Fiorano and Paul Ricard, which has a sprinkler system.
Pirelli 2019 Tyre Testing Schedule
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