Home F1 Pirelli starts F1 2026 tyre test with McLaren at Paul Ricard

Pirelli starts F1 2026 tyre test with McLaren at Paul Ricard

01/02/2025

Pirelli had its first tyre test of F1 2026 with McLaren at Paul Ricard with the mule car running the wet weather compound.

The first test session of 2025 relating to the development of the next generation of rain tyres, carried out with the McLaren F1 Team, came to an end this afternoon at the Le Castellet circuit. The focus of the test was on the wet and intermediate tyres for the 2026 season, when the regulations will stipulate the same 18” rim diameter as the current ones, but with a slightly smaller width and external diameter on both the front and rear axles.

Today and yesterday, the 3.463 kilometre long 2A version of the Le Castellet track was in use. On the first day Oscar Piastri completed 120 laps, with a best time of 1’07”008, while today Lando Norris completed 123 laps, with a best time of 1’07”956. Between them, they covered 840 kilometres, all on a wet track.

Yesterday, when it was dry and today, with intermittent rain, the track’s surface was artificially irrigated with water tankers and sprinklers in order to ensure the track conditions were as uniform as possible to allow the most effective evaluation of the test data gathered with the various prototypes.

“The first test session of 2025 proved very useful,” commented Mario Isola, Pirelli Director of Motorsport. “When testing wet weather tyres it’s not easy to consistently reproduce the same track conditions to get reliable data, but over these past two days we were able to acquire plenty of information that will be vital when it comes to defining the new intermediate and extreme wet tyres.

“It’s going to be a very busy start to the season for those of our engineers working on development: after this test at Paul Ricard, we have a further two test sessions in the coming two weeks. Both of them are in Spain and will focus on dry weather tyres. On 4 and 5 February, McLaren and Ferrari will be on track at the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit and then, on 12 and 13 at Jerez de la Frontera, Alpine will be working with us on both days, while McLaren and Mercedes will do one day each.”