Pirelli Barcelona test 2 review

F1 Test, Barcelona, Circuit de Catalunya

Pirelli once again saw teams at Barcelona use all of its 2015 tyres apart from the full wets, with the tyre supplier once again confirmed in its belief that the cars are considerably faster than in 2014.

“Barcelona represented the final opportunity for the teams to assess the interaction between our latest tyres and the 2015 cars, which as we have all noted appear to be significantly quicker than last year’s cars.", said Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery.

"We’ve seen a difference of up to two seconds, and that gap could be even bigger on the softer compounds. Because of this, the way that the tyres work with the cars has altered, which clearly has an effect on set-up and strategy. Although we had track temperatures that peaked at 31 degrees centigrade, conditions were still generally much cooler than we will typically see at most of the races, so this is another factor that has to be considered, particularly in the case of the hard tyre.

"The teams were able to test the entire range of 2015 P Zero tyres in Barcelona, which have a new rear construction this year, including the supersoft, which has a brand new compound as well. The soft compound set the fastest time of the test: two and a half seconds faster than last year’s pole time. Although there were some brief periods of rain, we only saw limited running on the intermediate tyre. Compared to last year though, it’s clear that most teams are already well-prepared for the season ahead.”

In addition to the usual 2015 tyre range, teams were also able to try out an unmarked prototype medium at this Barcelona test, which is being assessed by Pirelli for development purposes but, according to the tyre company "does not have any difference in performance to the standard medium".

Each team is allocated a total of 110 sets of tyres for testing purposes throughout 2015.

Fastest laps and tyre choices per day:

After four days of testing a total of 3502 laps were covered (compared to 3134 laps at the last Barcelona test, and 2294 laps at Jerez), with the performance gains in evidence compared to last year’s Spanish Grand Prix pole time of 1m25.232s. Rosberg’s time on Friday was also the fastest time of both Barcelona tests, beating the benchmark established during last week’s test (Grosjean, 1m24.067s, supersoft). However, as the supersoft is not ideally suited to the Circuit de Catalunya, it was not possible to assess a representative performance of the new supersoft tyre.

So far, a total of 41,048.3 kilometres have been covered by all the teams in pre-season testing.

The next time the teams will be on track will be on Friday March 13 for the first free practice session in Melbourne. The Pirelli compound choices for the first grands prix of the season are scheduled to be announced before Wednesday.

Testing statistics

Tyre sets brought to Barcelona test 2: 463 (including carry-over sets from previous tests)
(36 supersoft; 85 soft; 137 medium; 72 hard; 66 intermediate; 47 full wet, 20 prototype medium)

Tyre sets used during Barcelona test 2: 290
(30 supersoft; 74 soft; 122 medium; 42 hard; 4 intermediate; 0 full wet, 18 prototype medium)

Longest run per tyre: