Cold Austin temperatures unhelpful for 2020 tyre test – Pirelli

Cold weather at the Circuit of the Americas last weekend made it hard for Pirelli to gather useful data on the performance of its new tyres for the 2020 F1 season.

Drivers gave largely negative feedback on Friday last week after running prototype sets of the new rubber for next season.

However Pirelli motorsport director Mario Isola told RaceFans the unusually cool weather in the first practice session on Friday made it hard to judge whether they have successfully reduced the tyres’ sensitivity to overheating.

“The test was at very low temperature,” said Isola. “We were looking for an overheating reduction. That was not possible to quantify on a short run and with cold weather temperatures.

“I heard some comments about less grip on the new tyre, but the target was not really to increase the grip. It should be more or less the same level of grip, but with an increase of consistency.”

The teams who tested developments of the 2020 tyres prior to Austin had noticed this change, according to Isola. “That is exactly what we have experienced during all our tests because the 2020 construction and compounds have been tested more than once on different cars,” he said. “In general we had this result and it was evaluated better in terms of consistency.”

The cool conditions also made it difficult to judge the new compound has a better working range, as intended.

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Isola added the teams will find better performance from the new tyres from their 2020 cars. “The current cars are optimised for the 2019 construction,” he said.

“The new one, especially the rear one, has a different profile. It is possible that they have lost some points of downforce fitting the new one compared to the old one. We need to analyse that data.”

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto said the teams, FIA and F1 will discuss with Pirelli how to proceed and whether to introduce the new tyres for next season or stick with this year’s compounds.

“Before taking a final decision we need to take some time to analyse the data of Friday,” he said. “I think the behaviours of Friday was quite different to the one we had in Barcelona when we test them.

“The new tyres were not due to be faster, were not due to have better degradation. But there should in terms of working range and overheating have a better behaviour.”

“The feeling and the feedback of the drivers are so far not positive,” he added.

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