Pirelli set to sign off 2020 F1 tyres ahead of Austin test

The tyre company will now produce the extra sets of the new tyres to be run by all drivers on the Friday of the US GP, as well as giving the teams the information that will allow them to choose what combinations of compounds they wish to run in the two-day post-season test at Abu Dhabi.

Pirelli had requested the extra Barcelona test because it wanted to validate its final 2020 products on a circuit that's hard on tyres.

The top three teams were represented, with Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari), Alex Albon (Red Bul) and Esteban Ocon (Mercedes) all running a day each.

"The test was very good, we completed all the run plans with all the three teams," said Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola.

"Obviously the feedback is valuable with expert drivers in the cars, or drivers that are driving every weekend. We tested many different solutions, and we also crossed the solutions on different cars to have feedback from more than one car.

"We finalised the new construction, because one of the targets of the test was to sign-off the new construction, and we did.

"We tested many different compounds, more or less on all the levels from C1 to C4. Barcelona is more relevant for C1, C2 and C3 – C4 is a bit of an aggressive choice, but it was useful to have a look at the C4 in order to validate the compound that is new for next year. We didn't test any C5, but the C5 in Barcelona is a bit useless."

Pirelli now has to finalise its choice before passing it to the FIA for approval, having decided to stick with a range of five compounds.

"We are in the process now of analysing the data. We have the feedback from the drivers, but we also have the telemetry data from the test. We will come with a proposal to submit to the FIA for homologation.

"In terms of compounds I can say we will homologate five, as it is this year. But which compounds is still something we are investigating with the data coming from the test, crossing with date from previous tests, and also some indoor tests that we run so we have the full picture."

Each driver will be given two sets of the 2020 prototypes to run on Friday in Austin, giving the seven teams that did not do the Barcelona test a useful opportunity to gather data.

"We need to send the data and everything to the teams explaining what we need to do," said Isola.

"We give the opportunity to all the teams to test at least one 2020 compound in advance, so they have an idea, and they can finalise their understanding of the tyre in Abu Dhabi.

"In the past we gave 20 sets of tyres per team, and they have the freedom to decide what they want to test amongst the 2020 product, or the 2019 – they are both available. So we need to collect their request, and produce the tyres."