(Pirelli Motorsport Media)
Wednesday marked a very special day at the Silverstone circuit as Pirelli with the help of the Lotus F1 Team debuted their concept 18'' lower profile tyre. The Italian manufacturer hopes to introduce the tyre into Formula One in 2016 having initially stated that they would be looking to introduce the new tyre in 2017.
Charles Pic was in action for the Lotus F1 Team and completed 14 laps with the new 18'' tyre fitted to the E22 this morning. The new tyre received a great reception from observers which is what Pirelli's focus was and not on the lap times set by Pic.
The company are looking towards their Formula One tyre technology to become more relevant to their road car tyre development.
Charles Pic was in action for the Lotus F1 Team and completed 14 laps with the new 18'' tyre fitted to the E22 this morning. The new tyre received a great reception from observers which is what Pirelli's focus was and not on the lap times set by Pic.
The company are looking towards their Formula One tyre technology to become more relevant to their road car tyre development.
(Pirelli Motorsport Media)
Speaking about the 18'' tyre test, Pirelli's Motorsport director, Paul Hembery said:
'In our view, the new tyres looked stunning fitted to the Lotus, and the reaction has already been felt all over the world. These are just a prototype concept, but if the teams decided that they wanted us to proceed in this direction, we have the capability to carry on development in this area and come up with a production-ready version in a comparatively short space of time. We’ve heard a lot of opinions already and we look forward to canvassing other opinions in the coming weeks and months.
Even though performance wasn’t by any means priority here, the new tyres still behaved exactly in line with our expectations, so we’re clearly potentially at the beginning of a huge development curve, with the wheel and tyre size rules having remained unaltered for many years. These new tyres were clearly the focus of the test, but of course we managed to complete a lot of work for next year and the shorter term as well, with the two days of dedicated tyre testing from Ferrari, Marussia, Lotus and Red Bull as well. Having learned a lot from the previous tyre tests in Bahrain and Barcelona, we were now able to carry out a lot of more targeted work for 2015, on a fast and demanding circuit.'
© Ben Johnston 2014
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