Three teams to test for Pirelli at Paul Ricard

Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren will take part in Pirelli's wet tyre test at Paul Ricard.

The test will take place over two days on January 25-26 at the Paul Ricard circuit near Marseille in France, with only three teams taking part despite Pirelli making the test available to all teams. Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren are attending, with Mercedes surprisingly opting not to run a car.

McLaren has already confirmed Stoffel Vandoorne will drive at the test, which will only focus on wet tyre compounds and not intermediates or slicks. Paul Ricard allows the track to be artificially sprinkled to create wet conditions, whereas in recent years Pirelli had to rely on the weather or on tractors attempting to wet the circuit at Jerez.

Pre-season testing gets underway at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on February 22, with only two tests ahead of the first race in Melbourne.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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