Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Pirelli's F1 future close to resolution

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Pirelli expects to receive approval to carry out significant testing ahead of the 2017 regulation changes today.

As part of the plans to make cars faster and more aggressive looking, Pirelli has been tasked with delivering wider tyres which allow drivers to push harder and follow each other more closely. The brief has been given by the FIA despite a final contract between the governing body and Pirelli still not being signed, but motorsport boss Paul Hembery says Monday should see progress.

"The documents are all agreed," Hembery told F1i. "We've got a vote coming through that I guess by the time most of us land in Europe [on Monday afternoon] we'll have the result of the fax vote for the change in regulations to allow testing to happen this year.

"We have to thank all the teams and the FIA for their huge support in achieving that - well we assume we're achieving it, unless someone's changed their mind on the vote and then of course we're back to square one! But we feel there was a big effort made there and understanding that this year in particular we needed to do a lot of work to be ready with the new tyres and the new aero regs.

"Going forward we feel we have a good solution because we can use actual cars. 25 car test days which means the actual car can be used. That then opens up the opportunity for everyone to do some testing.

"So we're very happy that going forward if we do need to do more work... we'd love to think we can get it perfect first time but it is such a change and I'm quite sure there will be a few surprises for us next year as we get used to the new regs but the objective is to try and get the work done as close as we can to the requirements that the teams and the FIA have asked of us."

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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.