Pirelli raked up the miles with first 18-inch tyre test

Pirelli successfully completed on Friday the first test of its 2021 18-inch tyres at Paul Ricard, with Renault reserve driver Sergey Sirotkin racking up the miles during the two-day programme.

Overall, Sirotkin completed 213 trouble-free laps on board a mule car supplied by Renault and shod with F1's future low profile tyres.

"This was very useful for us to take a first look at the new generation of tyres and start shaping the development path that we will follow for the remainder of this year and next year," said Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola.

• Pirelli denies Mercedes dominance rooted in thinner tread tyres

"Of course, it is hard to read too much into this test as these are still very early days, but we have accumulated all the preliminary data that we wanted in good weather conditions, so thank you very much to Renault and to Sergey for their availability."

Additional tests of the 2021-spec tyres are scheduled in October and December, respectively with McLaren and Mercedes.

Sirotkin shared the track at Paul Ricard with Mercedes reserve driver Esteban Ocon who was tasked with putting a final batch of 2020 tyres through their paces.

"With the 13-inch 2020 tyres, we covered 212 laps over the two days thanks to Esteban Ocon and Mercedes," added Isola.

"The work consisted of assessing a range of prototype slick tyres, as we begin to finalise next year's specification: the last season of 13-inch tyres before we move on to 18 inches in 2021."

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter