Mario Isola expands on the new wet compound to make its debut in Imola, as he adds on the blanket-free test plan ahead of decision.
While Pirelli added a slick tyre to its rostrum for F1 2023, they are to see a new version of the wet compound in Imola which can be used without the tyre warmers. Not only that, Isola also revealed that they are working on a new intermediate compound too.
“The new Wet tyre is starting from Imola and we are now also developing the new Intermediate tyre that I hope we can introduce as soon as we can,” said Isola. “Obviously we have not many test sessions. The new Wet tyre is working quite well without blankets. It’s the first step in this journey, together with Formula 1 and the teams.”
Isola calls the wet tyres without the tyre blanket to be the first step towards removing it totally which F1 is planning for to be done in 2024 or in future. They have had couple of tests which has generated mixed reviews thus far and more is planned.
There is one in Barcelona post the Spanish GP, while Silverstone will see another when they decide during the British GP. Isola knows this is a big challenge considering how difficult it is even now with the blankets to generate heat in the tyres straight out of the pits.
But he feels it is needed for not just cost benefit, and also on sustainability. “There is a lot of talking about removing the blankets from Formula 1 cars,” said the Pirelli chief. “It’s a challenge, as I said. It’s a big challenge on the technical side. We will do everything possible to achieve this challenge.
“We know how important it is to go in this direction of sustainability, and we are also working on the slick tyres and after the race in Barcelona, we have the next test session where, for the first time, the baseline will be a tyre without blankets. So we are on this journey, as I said, and we have to wait a little bit and see what is going to happen on that.
“It is planned to have a meeting with all of the stakeholders after the test in Silverstone, to share the results and to see if we can achieve that by the end of the year. That means to have introduced the new tyres for next year,” summed up Isola, who then expanded on how the testing has been thus far which he feels is part of a long journey.
“Bahrain is very different compared to previous tests that were in Paul Ricard, with temperature which was quite cold,” started Isola. “Bahrain is not a circuit where you struggle with the warm-up. And obviously the feedback was completely different compared to Paul Ricard, as I said. The warm-up was not an issue.
“It was more about the degradation on a circuit that is known for high degradation. So now we have a couple of different circuits, Barcelona and Silverstone, where we will test the hardest part of the range with this new construction, because, due to the fact the pressure is going to increase a lot, compared to now, we need to design a construction able to start at a much lower pressure to stabilise at a pressure that is acceptable for a Formula 1 car.”
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