Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Williams sees advantage in testing for Pirelli

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Williams chief technical officer Pat Symonds believes there will be an advantage for teams testing Pirelli's 2017 tyres.

Pirelli has been allowed 25 car days to test tyres for next season using current cars, with additional running allowed with past cars. Williams is one of the teams to have registered its interest in carrying out the tests - with two cars running on one day counting as two car days - and Symonds believes teams can gain an advantage by doing so.

"Naturally they bring a load of tyres and they say 'which ones do you like?' and you say 'those ones' and that's where it moves on," Symonds is quoted as saying by Autosport.

"It's not exactly scientific, but the fact is you've said you like those ones and someone else might have gone 'I like those [different] ones' so things tend to go in your direction."

Pirelli had suggested modifying a 2015 car in order to increase downforce levels in preparation for the new regulations, something Symonds believes could also help those teams involved.

"It's quite an undertaking. It could pay off. It's not all wasted work in terms of the front end of the car.

"A lot of good layout that we're doing will ... I won't say that we're making parts that will go onto next year's car but we're just learning how to lay out that sort of stuff.

"The rear's actually quite easy to do and the aerodynamics, although we need to perhaps talk to [FIA race director] Charlie [Whiting] because he's been a bit prescriptive on how we do things, we were planning to do some stuff like that."

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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.