Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen unconvinced by new Pirelli wets

Kimi Raikkonen was left unconvinced by Pirelli's prototype wet tyres being tested at Paul Ricard on Monday.

The Finn spent the first day of running in the Ferrari, with team-mate Sebastian Vettel taking over for day two of the wet tyre test on Tuesday. The plan on the opening day was for ten-lap runs to test potential new wet compounds against a baseline of last year's wets and Raikkonen says his first impressions were that the old tyres were better.

“I think it is too early to say but we had the same as last year and we had some new ones, but I think we prefer last year's ones," Raikkonen is quoted as saying by Crash.net. "It is a bit too early to tell."

However, Raikkonen admitted it would be hard for the drivers to feel confident on a new wet tyre compound as they get used to the cars once again having not driven in anger since November.

“I think it was OK. We haven't driven for a while, then last week in the older car for one day, so I think we can learn from this. We are not so happy usually in the wet conditions so it helps us to understand more.”

Vettel is joined by Red Bull's Daniil Kvyat on track on Tuesday, with Stoffel Vandoorne completing both days of the test.

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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.