(Pirelli Motorsport Media)
Pirelli will provide the Lotus F1 Team with a prototype 18'' tyre for the Enstone outfit to test during next week's two day in season test session at the Silverstone circuit following Sunday's British Grand Prix.
The aim of the test will be for Lotus to provide Pirelli with feedback on the new tyre dimension with a view to if all the team's agree introducing the new tyre into Formula One in the near future. Pirelli is seeking a way of its Formula One technology to become more relevant to the production of road car tyre's.
Pirelli currently supplies Formula One with a 13'' tyre, however speaking about the decision to test the new tyre, Pirelli Motorsport boss Paul Hembery stated:
'The 13-inch tyre is no longer relevant to the everyday road user, because even an 18-inch tyre is used by standard vehicles these days. While 18-inch tyres would be a big step for Formula One, there are many other motorsport series that already use this size. So there’s scope to go even bigger than that in Formula One in years to come.
In order to underline F1’s role as a test bed for future mobility solutions, we believe that it benefits everybody to have as close a link between road car tyres and competition tyres as possible: a belief we have held ever since we introduced the low profile tyre from competition to road use back in the 1970s. However, we’d like to emphasise that this move is not something that we are actively pushing for, as our role in Formula One is not to instigate changes. Instead, it’s to help teams and drivers make the most out of the equipment, regulations and resources they have at their disposal – whatever they decide that framework is going to be.'
Pirelli's head or research and development, Maurizio said:
'“Our competition career started with tyres that had a direct relevance to the road when Prince Borghese drove his Itala to victory on the 1907 Peking to Paris race. More than 100 years later, this is a concept that we are ready to adopt again. The tyre you will see next week is principally designed to demonstrate aesthetics rather than performance. But the speed of our reaction means that we could have a production-ready example within months if required. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing everybody’s views about our latest concept, and we hope that people enjoy seeing something out on track that is a little different.'
© Ben Johnston 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment