Testing report
Formula 1 Barcelona February testing II
Pirelli compound choices for Australia to be announced within next three days
Pre-season testing ends with the teams having tried all the 2015 tyres apart from the full wet.
Published: Mar 1, 2015, 10:01 PM
Copy link
Share on Viber
Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery: “Barcelona represented the final opportunity for the teams to assess the interaction between our latest tyres and the 2015 cars, which as we have all noted appear to be significantly quicker than last year’s cars. We’ve seen a difference of up to two seconds, and that gap could be even bigger on the softer compounds. Because of this, the way that the tyres work with the cars has altered, which clearly has an effect on set-up and strategy.
Although we had track temperatures that peaked at 31 degrees centigrade, conditions were still generally much cooler than we will typically see at most of the races, so this is another factor that has to be considered, particularly in the case of the hard tyre. The teams were able to test the entire range of 2015 P Zero tyres in Barcelona, which have a new rear construction this year, including the supersoft, which has a brand new compound as well.
The soft compound set the fastest time of the test: two and a half seconds faster than last year’s pole time. Although there were some brief periods of rain, we only saw limited running on the intermediate tyre. Compared to last year though, it’s clear that most teams are already well-prepared for the season ahead.”
Fastest laps and tyre choices per day
In addition to the usual 2015 tyre range, teams were also able to try out a prototype medium at this Barcelona test, which is being assessed by Pirelli for development purposes but does not have any difference in performance to the standard medium. These tyres did not carry any colour markings.
Each team is allocated a total of 110 sets of tyres for testing purposes throughout 2015.
Day 1 Massa (Williams) 103 laps 1m23.500s Soft Day 2 Rosberg (Mercedes) 106 laps 1m22.792s Soft Day 3 Hamilton (Mercedes) 76 laps 1m23.022s Soft Day 4 Bottas (Williams) 89 laps 1m23.063s Supersoft
After four days of testing a total of 3502 laps were covered (compared to 3134 laps at the last Barcelona test, and 2294 laps at Jerez), with the performance gains in evidence compared to last year’s Spanish Grand Prix pole time of 1m25.232s. Rosberg’s time on Friday was also the fastest time of both Barcelona tests, beating the benchmark established during last week’s test (Grosjean, 1m24.067s, supersoft). However, as the supersoft is not ideally suited to the Circuit de Catalunya, it was not possible to assess a representative performance of the new supersoft tyre.
So far, a total of 41,048.3 kilometres have been covered by all the teams in pre-season testing.
The next time the teams will be on track will be on Friday March 13 for the first free practice session in Melbourne. The Pirelli compound choices for the first grands prix of the season are scheduled to be announced before Wednesday.
The best times today (day four) and their tyre choices
1.Bottas (Williams) 89 laps 1m23.063s Supersoft 2.Vettel (Ferrari) 129 laps 1m23.469s Supersoft 3.Nasr (Sauber) 159 laps 1m24.023s Supersoft 4.Verstappen (Toro Rosso) 85 laps 1m24.527s Supersoft 5.Ricciardo (Red Bull) 72 laps 1m24.638s Soft 6.Perez (Force India) 130 laps 1m25.113s Supersoft 7.Rosberg (Mercedes) 148 laps 1m25.186s Medium 8.Button (McLaren) 30 laps 1m25.327s Supersoft 9.Maldonado (Lotus) 36 laps 1m28.272s Medium
Pirelli Motorsport
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
Take our 5 minute survey.
- The Motorsport.com Team
Read and post comments
Read also :
Share Or Save This Story
Copy link
Share on Viber
Previous article Ferrari leave the winter testing pretty happy with the way the car is performing
Next article Ricciardo insists Red Bull is ready for Melbourne
Top Comments
There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?
View More & Comment
Latest news
Robert Kubica announces exit from AF Corse’s privateer Hypercar in WEC
WEC
WEC WEC
Monza
23 min
Robert Kubica announces exit from AF Corse’s privateer Hypercar in WEC
Charles Leclerc penalised for Liam Lawson clash; Kimi Antonelli and Oliver Bearman also punished after F1 Brazilian GP
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
Sao Paulo GP
48 min
Charles Leclerc penalised for Liam Lawson clash; Kimi Antonelli and Oliver Bearman also punished after F1 Brazilian GP
Max Verstappen "needs to understand what happened" after "night and day" F1 comeback in Brazilian GP
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
Sao Paulo GP
49 min
Max Verstappen "needs to understand what happened" after "night and day" F1 comeback in Brazilian GP
LIVE: NASCAR Cup season finale at Homestead lap-by-lap updates
NASCAR Cup
NAS NASCAR Cup
Homestead-Miami
1 h
LIVE: NASCAR Cup season finale at Homestead lap-by-lap updates
Feature
Discover prime content
How F1’s rules got to be so complex
Formula 1
By Pat Symonds
How F1’s rules got to be so complex
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
You have 2 options:
- Become a subscriber.
- Disable your adblocker.
Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here
Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page
Manage Alerts
Subscribe