Pirelli review second pre-season test

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

The Formula One teams completed the second of 3 pre-season tests at Barcelona, with Friday the last of 4 day running on Circuit de Catalunya. Pirelli enjoyed seeing all compounds in action over the four days, but teams noticed high degradation on all tyres.

Some unusually cold conditions restricted the amount of meaningful data that could be accumulated. The final pre-season test of the year also takes place in Barcelona next week, from February 28 to March 3.

Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director: “The teams experienced quite high degradation in Barcelona, and that was really down to the weather conditions. The conditions we had in Barcelona are far from typical of the rest of the season, with much cooler ambient and track temperatures than we would normally race in, and even some rain on the final day. This put the tyres outside of their usual working ranges, which led to problems such as graining. The conditions were particularly unsuited to the supersoft tyre, due to the circuit layout and the roughness of the surface in addition to the cold temperatures. Coupled with the fact that teams are still making big set-up adjustments to their new cars and trying out our complete range of our tyres to optimise the package, we saw levels of degradation that are not typical. Once we get to Melbourne the tyres should be much more within their intended working range, which will eliminate the unusual amount of degradation that some teams have experienced.”

Barcelona test 1 Facts

The teams are allocated 100 sets of tyres per car per year for testing purposes. After an initial contact with the 2013 range for the first time in Jerez, they again concentrated on expanding their knowledge of the new tyre characteristics this year, and how they interact with the new cars: all of which were present for the first time in Barcelona.

Ambient and track temperatures were cool: generally between 10 to 15 degrees centigrade ambient, which was on the whole cooler than the previous Jerez test. This led to some graining, which occurs when a tyre slides if it is not up to temperature, with the friction against the track surface tearing off strips of rubber.

With most of the initial work on new cars already completed in Jerez, the teams were able to also focus on longer runs and race simulations with varying fuel loads. Between two and three pit stops are expected at the first grand prix in Australia: some of the teams that carried out race simulations stopped the equivalent of four times in Barcelona, demonstrating that the ideal target should be met in the more typical conditions of Melbourne.

- The time difference between the slick compounds was in the region of 0.5s per lap, but the unusual weather conditions in Barcelona meant that this was not entirely conclusive.
- The teams sampled the Cinturato Green intermediate and the Cinturato Blue full wet tyre for the first time on Friday. The wet-weather tyres have a new rear construction this year, which improves traction at the rear in particular and reduces snap oversteer.
- The fastest overall time of the test set by Sergio Pérez on day two (1m21.848s) comfortably beat the fastest time during testing last year at Barcelona: 1m22.030s (set by Kimi Raikkonen, Lotus).
- Barcelona is an extremely technical circuit that tests most aspects of a car’s overall performance. The most stressed tyres at the Circuit de Catalunya are those on the left.

Driver lap counts at Barcelona test 1

1. Fernando Alonso - 283 laps
2. Max Chilton - 241 laps
3. Valtteri Bottas - 189 laps
4. Jean-Eric Vergne- 186 laps
5. Nico Hulkenberg - 179 laps
6. Pastor Maldonado - 178 laps
7. Sergio Perez - 174 laps
8. Lewis Hamilton - 173 laps
9. Mark Webber - 172 laps
10. Esteban Gutierrez - 164 laps
11. Nico Rosberg - 162 laps
12. Romain Grosjean - 160 laps
13. Charles Pic France - 151 laps
14. Sebastian Vettel - 150 laps
15. Paul di Resta - 144 laps
16. Daniel Ricciardo - 143 laps
17. Giedo van der Garde - 143 laps
18. Jenson Button - 141 laps
19. Kimi Raikkonen - 87 laps
20. Felipe Massa - 80 laps
21. Adrian Sutil - 78 laps
22. Jules Bianchi - 61 laps

Tyre usage at Barcelona

Total number of sets brought to Barcelona: 385 sets which equals 1628 tyres
- of which supersoft tyres: 24 sets
- of which soft tyres: 87 sets
- of which medium tyres: 132 sets
- of which hard tyres: 97 sets
- of which intermediate tyres: 40 sets
- of which wet tyres: 27 sets

Total amount of sets used: 303
- of which supersoft tyres: 5 sets
- of which soft tyres: 53 sets
- of which medium tyres: 127 sets
- of which hard tyres: 84 sets
- of which intermediate tyres: 24 sets
- of which wet tyres: 10 sets

Longest run: 24 laps on the hard compound
36 laps of the medium compound
31 laps on the soft compound
16 laps on the supersoft compound
29 laps on the intermediate compound
22 laps on the wet compound

Highest / lowest ambient temperature over four days: 20 °C (Day 2) / 7 °C (Day 4)
Highest / lowest track temperature over four days: 26 °C (Day 2) / 6 °C (Day 4)

Testing Times

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4