Pirelli still unclear over F1 pre-season testing plans

Pirelli has yet to find out if it will get to test in warm weather conditions during pre-season ahead of the 2017 season.

The tyre manufacturer wants to test in a Middle East location such as Bahrain in order to ensure representative temperatures when running the 2017 tyres on new cars. Testing takes on increasing importance with new aerodynamic regulations aimed at lowering lap times being introduced, while Pirelli will also have bigger tyres next season.

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Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery says he has made it clear why he feels warm weather testing would be beneficial but has yet to have confirmation on where the pre-season season tests will take place.

“It’s not really a fight, we’ll go where the sport wants us to go," Hembery told F1i when asked if he is losing the battle to test in warm conditions.

"Ultimately we feel with such a big change it would be beneficial for everybody - ourselves included - to go somewhere where the temperature is representative of what you’ll see in a race and also a circuit that’s representative in a race. So that would be our ideal situation.

"Actually going through the paddock [during the Italian Grand Prix weekend] we’ve had different comments as to where actually we might be going so it’s as much a mystery for us as it probably is for you!”

When the new power unit regulations were introduced in 2014, teams carried out an initial test at Jerez before two further tests in Bahrain. Teams prefer to hold the first pre-season test in Europe to be able to react quickly to any unforeseen problems with the new cars.

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Scene at the Italian Grand Prix

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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.