Driver and team quotes from Pirelli tyre test
Credit: The F1 Times (www.thef1times.com)
Ferrari
Felipe Massa: It was a positive start to begin to understand the behaviour of the Pirelli tyres. I felt at ease right from the start and there were no unpleasant surprises. We tried two different types and acquired a lot of data which will be useful for the Italian company to develop the tyres still further for the start of the 2011 season: on the hards, there were some difficulties over a long run while the softs worked well both on the very first lap and also after they had done a larger number of laps.
Stefano Domenicali, Team Principal: I wish to take this opportunity to welcome back Pirelli to Formula 1. It is nice to see two symbols of Italian excellence together on track. I am sure that Pirelli will make a very important contribution to our sport in terms of professionalism and technical research.
Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel: It was all about the tyres today, as this was the first chance we have had to try them out and work with them to develop the car’s set-up for next year. I think the tyres behaved well, better than expected given the short amount of time Pirelli have had and they’ve done a good job. Pirelli are obviously in the middle of their development and what we used today is not what we will race with, but it was a good start. The circuit was in good condition and we had blue skies all day.
Mercedes
Nico Rosberg: As a team, and particularly the engineers, we did a really good job to be well prepared for this week’s Pirelli test with the work back at the factory and the support here at the track proving invaluable. That really helps once you get the tyres on and we were able to focus precisely on the set-up direction and have found various improvements. It’s a good start however there is obviously still some way to go before we get the best out of the tyres.
Ross Brawn: Today has been very important for the team to start building our relationship with Pirelli. Whilst a lot of details remain to be understood, we feel that we have gained an initial understanding of the operational requirements of the two compounds that we have and have highlighted some important areas for investigation and improvement. We have been lucky to have been able to get exposure to the Pirelli tyres at a track with which we are now very familiar and in conditions that we will not experience again until the final test of the season in Bahrain. Michael watched today’s proceedings with great interest and is looking forward to experiencing the tyres for himself tomorrow.
Renault
Robert Kubica: It’s always interesting to test new tyres and today was our first chance to try the new Pirellis and work with the new tyre engineers. We all know how important the tyres are for the behaviour of the car and so we concentrated on evaluating both compounds and understanding as much as we could about the tyre characteristics. Although we didn’t do a massive number of laps, we have still learned a few things and it feels good to have begun our relationship with Pirelli. Because we stopped early, we have saved some of the tyres for tomorrow, so it will be a busy day as we continue learning.
Alan Permane, Chief Engineer: We had our first taste of Pirelli tyres today and were able to run both the medium and soft compounds. The morning went well and Robert was reasonably happy with the car balance, although we made a few changes during the day to improve it. Our initial impression of the tyres has been positive: they were working well with good grip and no warm-up issues. Unfortunately we had to stop early because we had a mechanical issue with the car and we preferred to save the tyres for tomorrow when we’ve rectified the problem.
Williams
Rubens Barrichello: We’ve had a busy schedule today with plenty of work to do. This morning we evaluated aero set-up, before going for performance runs in the afternoon. This was our first session with the Pirelli tyres and I found it quite interesting. My initial impressions are positive and I look forward to working with them again tomorrow.
Tom McCullough, Senior Test Engineer: We completed more aero testing this morning and have collated some useful data. We then started our evaluations of the Pirelli tyres. We tested both the medium and soft compounds and have learnt a lot about their different characteristics. They performed well so, overall, we’ve had a very positive first day with Pirelli.
Toro Rosso
Jaime Alguersuari: It was a useful experience for me to run on these new tyres. We did a good mileage, some runs on heavy fuel and some with less and it was interesting to see how the tyres behaved. It is too early to say more than that, because of course there will be more development to come from Pirelli before the next season starts.
Laurent Mekies, Chief Engineer: From the car side, we had a trouble free day. Track conditions are now very different to those over the race weekend, partly because of the two days of running during the young driver test. The day went well and we are now preparing for the second day of running with Pirelli, when Sébastien Buemi will take over at the wheel.
Sauber
Kamui Kobayashi: I think the tyres from Pirelli are well made. We tested how to work with these new tyres and how we need to further develop our car for them, learning in which way they are different to what we were used to running. The tyres were quite consistent. Only in the morning I struggled with tyre wear, but after we made some set-up changes this wasn’t an issue any longer. It was a very interesting test for us.
James Key, Technical Director: It was a very productive day. The baseline set-up was not too far away to begin with. We made a few changes and found a reasonable balance for the car fairly early. We ran our programme as planned with shorter runs to conserve tyres and consistency and a longer run in the end. We feel we learned a lot about the way the Pirelli tyres are behaving and responding to different set-up changes. We have to hand it to Pirelli, the tyres are already on a good level and we feel it was a very positive day.
Virgin
Timo Glock: It was good to be back in the car today to begin work on the 2011 programme. As our new tyre supplier it was good to start the relationship with Pirelli’s engineers and take a good look at the tyres to understand their characteristics. We did a lot of laps and worked though quite a detailed programme, so we have ended the day with a good feel for how the car was behaving with the tyres. We have some more work to do tomorrow and this will leave us in a good position over the winter until testing starts again early next year.
John Booth, Team Principal: We very much enjoyed the first day of our new working relationship with Pirelli and thanks to a very straightforward day with the car we were able to complete our full programme, running various stint lengths and fuel loads with both the medium and soft compound tyres. It is obviously very early days but we were able to get a good feel for the behaviour of the tyres and the results were positive both in terms of laptime and car balance. We were also able to continue running a number of test items for next year’s car with very satisfactory results.
Lotus
Heikki Kovalainen: It’s good to welcome Pirelli back into our sport and we had a good day on track, completing the whole programme and the balance of the car felt very comfortable all day. Honestly, I would like to drive the car again tomorrow but now we have a long break until testing starts again in a couple of months and I can’t wait to get back in the car next year.
Mike Gasocyne, Chief Technical Officer: An interesting and very useful first day of testing with Pirelli. We had no mechanical issues on the car and managed to complete our full programme in 88 laps. The car was ballasted up to the 2011 weight limit for the day and we ran a series of fundamental tests within the parameters we could change with the tyres and in the afternoon we found some clear and useful setup directions for the engineers to work on. We set our quickest lap of the day at the end of the session on a pretty worn set and all of the data gives us very useful information that we will carry over to tomorrow when Jarno is back in the car for his first taste of the new Pirelli tyres.
Hispania
Dr. Colin Kolles, Team Principal: With an air temperature of around 30 degrees and a track of 44, today’s conditions were ideal for testing the new Pirelli tyres for the first time. We have worked very hard and we were one of the teams who did a big number of laps. The target of the testing program today was to get as much data about the new tyres as possible, and we fulfilled it completely. Firstly, Pastor Maldonado had to get used to the new tyres, which are also new to us. After his settling in period, he felt more comfortable and could give us more information about the new tyres so that we could learn about them and keep on improving.
Pastor Maldonado: I enjoyed being back in the HRT F110 and get more experience in a Formula 1 car. We fulfilled our complete testing program in order to get as much data as possible from the new Pirelli tyres. I have now driven with both tyre suppliers, Bridgestone and Pirelli, and what I learnt out of it was that they are very different in their characteristics. Now we are going to analyze today’s data and get ready to keep on learning about the tyres at the last day of testing tomorrow.
Credit: The F1 Times (www.thef1times.com)
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