Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Pirelli plays down Raikkonen comments

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Pirelli says it is not concerned by comments from Kimi Raikkonen regarding the prototype wet tyres tested at Paul Ricard.

Raikkonen drove for Ferrari on the opening day of the wet tyre test, with an initial baseline run on 2015 wet tyres being followed by a number of 10-lap stints on different prototypes. After his day in the car, Raikkonen said he was unconvinced by the new wets and preferred the 2015 specification.

However, Pirelli racing manager Mario Isola says all of the prototype tyres were designed to be largely similar to last year's compounds.

"Kimi was testing different prototypes in full wet conditions," Isola told reporters after Tuesday's running. "He was not unhappy, from what I know. He didn't find big differences, but that was not unexpected because one of the targets was to have a prototype that's slightly better for full wet conditions."

Sebastian Vettel drove on Tuesday and was more positive than his Ferrari team-mate, saying he was pleased with the consistency of the tyres.

“In the end you are a bit blind,” Vettel is quoted as saying by Crash.net. “You have a rough idea of what tyres you test and you know how the tyres felt last year. Then again it is not clear what is going to happen after this. Some sets you have a better and a worse feeling at different areas around the track so there are some results but it is up to Pirelli to go ahead with it.

“It was fairly consistent conditions, we mostly used the extreme wets and had one run on the intermediates to get an idea on the crossover points. It is natural that when it is a bit drier that the extreme wets are suffering a bit more. It was fairly consistent and there was no major drop off in lap times.”

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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.