Mario Isola spills on how the F1 2026 Pirelli tyre testing panned out with Aston Martin, with more planned in the coming weeks to be ready for the new era.
While the 2025 F1 tyre testing is nearing its end with only handful of days remaining, which includes a practice run in Mexico GP, Pirelli has started the 2026 testing with a mule car. The first one took place at Barcelona with Felipe Drugovich driving a modified Aston Martin car.
Pirelli got a good first base with the first test, where the focus was to understand the mechanical and aero balance of the car, which will help them understand the load on the tyres. “Yeah, obviously it was the first test, a bit difficult,” said Isola. “Our main job was to try to correlate simulations with mule car.
“We know that mule cars cannot be representative considering that 2026 cars are completely different, but I believe we did a good job and thanks to Aston Martin, that was the first team running the test, [we got] valuable information and probably also a good starting point as a baseline for future development.
“The main topic was to understand the mechanical balance and the aero balance of the car. So, for example, we decided to run always with the DRS open in order to compensate the front and rear load and then they made some adjustments obviously to the set-up of the car, to balance the car properly.
“But the new size is working well. We didn’t find any issue in running or any, like, a lot of graining or other elements that could affect the test. So we are happy with this first test and we’re ready for the next two sessions,” summed up Isola, who spilled about the next running as well.
They will be testing this week with McLaren and further running will take place towards the end of the year and into 2025 as the mule cars get ready. “McLaren then and Alpine for a wet test,” said Isola. “This is to the end of the year. And then obviously we are finalising the test plan for 2025 with all the teams that gave their availability to make a mule car for us. So we are very happy that we can test with all of them.”
Here’s info from Pirelli test in Barcelona of 2026 tyres
Here’s Pirelli on talks with George Russell
Here’s last F1 2025 tyre test
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