Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsPirelli

Lack of testing has led to unfair criticism - Hembery

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Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery believes the tyre manufacturer has been on the receiving end of unfair criticism due to the lack of testing.

The FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) recently approved changes to the regulations which will allow Pirelli 25 car days to test with current cars this season in preparation for new regulations in 2017. The change also provides Pirelli with the opportunity to do tyre testing over the following two seasons.

The tyre manufacturer has often been on the end of negative comments from drivers who want to be able to push harder on the tyres, but Hembery told F1i the regulations have limited the development of the rubber.

Asked if Pirelli has faced unfair criticism due to the lack of available testing in recent years, Hembery replied: "It’s two-fold.

"Yes, the answer to that is yes. And the second aspect is having a clarity of input of what is required and what is being asked of us.

"We had that input at one stage and then it turned over to become something to be criticised. Now we still would say we were only doing what we were being asked to do at that time, now we’re being asked to do something else and judge us when we’ve brought you something different.

"Of course, now we have a good challenge now to bring something different. Initial indications are that we will have something very different to the product that we have today so let’s hope that gets the drivers happy and they enjoy the driving.”

And Hembery sees the 2017 regulations as an opportunity for Pirelli to show what it is capable of, even though the preparation time remains far from ideal.

“Yeah, bear in mind it’s still only six months! We haven’t had a good couple of years to get ready for this, we’ve got a bit of a crash program to actually get this done. So it’s still a very significant challenge.”

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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.