19/11/2010
NEWS STORY
 |
Ferrari's Felipe Massa topped the timesheets at Yas Island today as all twelve teams finally got their hands on the new Pirelli rubber they will be using in 2011.
The Brazilian completed 94 laps on his way to posting a best time of 1.40.170, out-pacing newly-crowned world champion Sebastian Vettel by 0.330s.
"It was a positive start to begin to understand the behaviour of the Pirelli tyres," said Massa at the end of the session. "I felt at ease right from the start and there were no unpleasant surprises.
"We tried two different types and acquired a lot of data which will be useful for the Italian company to develop the tyres still further for the start of the 2011 season: on the hards, there were some difficulties over a long run while the softs worked well both on the very first lap and also after they had done a larger number of laps."
"I wish to take this opportunity to welcome back Pirelli to Formula 1," added team boss Domenicali. "It is nice to see two symbols of Italian excellence together on track. I am sure that Pirelli will make a very important contribution to our sport in terms of professionalism and technical research."
Sebastian Vettel was back at the wheel of the RB6, just five days after taking his historic title at the same venue. With four sets of Pirelli tyres available for the first day, Red Bull Racing used the opportunity to gain as much information as possible about them and understand how they work with the car, ahead of the 2011 season.
"It was all about the tyres today," said Vettel, "as this was the first chance we have had to try them out and work with them to develop the car's set-up for next year. I think the tyres behaved well, better than expected given the short amount of time Pirelli have had and they've done a good job. Pirelli are obviously in the middle of their development and what we used today is not what we will race with, but it was a good start. The circuit was in good condition and we had blue skies all day.
"It was great to be back in the car after an incredible week," he continued, "I went to Salzburg on Monday morning for a TV show and press conference and then to the UK to say thanks to the team in Milton Keynes, that was quite emotional. It's nice for me and the team to be able to enjoy our success, but 2011 started today and I was focusing on the tyres and getting to know them - I think we have learned quite a lot."
For McLaren, weho had Gary Paffett on duty, first impressions of the tyre were positive, with basic balance and performance similar to that of the Bridgestone. The day was mostly spent gathering comparative tyre data, but the Woking team also managed to put some miles on a number of proposed components for next season
Fouth quickest was Kamui Kobayashi, the Japanese driver completing 83 laps on his way to posting a best time of 1:40.950. "I think the tyres are well made," he said. "We tested how to work with these new tyres and how we need to further develop our car for them, learning in which way they are different to what we were used to running. The tyres were quite consistent. Only in the morning I struggled with tyre wear, but after we made some set-up changes this wasn't an issue any longer. It was a very interesting test for us."
"It was a very productive day," added technical director James Key. "The baseline set-up was not too far away to begin with. We made a few changes and found a reasonable balance for the car fairly early. We ran our programme as planned with shorter runs to conserve tyres and consistency and a longer run in the end. We feel we learned a lot about the way the tyres are behaving and responding to different set-up changes. We have to hand it to Pirelli, the tyres are already on a good level and we feel it was a very positive day."
"It's always interesting to test new tyres and today was our first chance to try the new Pirellis and work with the new tyre engineers," said Renault's Robert Kubica who finished fifth quickest. "We all know how important the tyres are for the behaviour of the car and so we concentrated on evaluating both compounds and understanding as much as we could about the tyre characteristics. Although we didn't do a massive number of laps, we have still learned a few things and it feels good to have begun our relationship with Pirelli. Because we stopped early, we have saved some of the tyres for tomorrow, so it will be a busy day as we continue learning."
"We were able to run both the medium and soft compounds," added Alan Permane. "The morning went well and Robert was reasonably happy with the car balance, although we made a few changes during the day to improve it. Our initial impression of the tyres has been positive: they were working well with good grip and no warm-up issues. Unfortunately we had to stop early because we had a mechanical issue with the car and we preferred to save the tyres for tomorrow when we've rectified the problem."
Rubens Barrichello completed 91 laps for Williams as the Grove outfit focussed on aero testing, baseline runs and tyre evaluations.
"We've had a busy schedule today with plenty of work to do," said the Brazilian. "This morning we evaluated aero set-up, before going for performance runs in the afternoon. This was our first session with the Pirelli tyres and I found it quite interesting. My initial impressions are positive and I look forward to working with them again tomorrow.
"We completed more aero testing this morning and have collated some useful data," added senior test engineer Tom McCullough. "We then started our evaluations of the Pirelli tyres. We tested both the medium and soft compounds and have learnt a lot about their different characteristics. They performed well so, overall, we've had a very positive first day with Pirelli.
Force India had Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil on duty, the Scot completing 21 laps and posting a best time of 1:41.615, while the German completed 20 laps on his way to posting a best of 1:42.859.
At Mercedes, Nico Rosberg's programme was to complete an initial performance evaluation to various set-up parameters with the two tyre compounds provided.
"As a team, and particularly the engineers, we did a really good job to be well prepared for this week's test with the work back at the factory and the support here at the track proving invaluable," said the German who hands over to Michael Schumacher tomorrow. "That really helps once you get the tyres on and we were able to focus precisely on the set-up direction and have found various improvements. It's a good start however there is obviously still some way to go before we get the best out of the tyres."
"Today has been very important for the team to start building our relationship with Pirelli," added Ross Brawn. "Whilst a lot of details remain to be understood, we feel that we have gained an initial understanding of the operational requirements of the two compounds that we have and have highlighted some important areas for investigation and improvement.
"We have been lucky to have been able to get exposure to the Pirelli tyres at a track with which we are now very familiar and in conditions that we will not experience again until the final test of the season in Bahrain," added the Englishman. "Michael watched today's proceedings with great interest and is looking forward to experiencing the tyres for himself tomorrow."
Jaime Alguersuari was at the wheel of the STR5 for Toro Rosso and spent the morning evaluating how the car behaved on the new tyres, as well as working on set-up to suit them. In the afternoon, work began on evaluating tyre performance and behaviour over long and short runs.
"It was a useful experience for me to run on these new tyres," said the Spaniard. "We did a good mileage, some runs on heavy fuel and some with less and it was interesting to see how the tyres behaved. It is too early to say more than that, because of course there will be more development to come from Pirelli before the next season starts."
"From the car side, we had a trouble free day," added chief engineer, Laurent Mekies. "Track conditions are now very different to those over the race weekend, partly because of the two days of running during the young driver test. The day went well and we are now preparing for the second day of running with Pirelli, when Sebastien Buemi will take over at the wheel."
Timo Glock was in the Virgin conducting a programme of tyre evaluations and setup work. In common with the other teams, Virgin Racing will work with the eight sets of tyres available to them during the two days, comprising the medium and soft compounds.
"It was good to be back in the car today to begin work on the 2011 programme," said Glock. "As our new tyre supplier it was good to start the relationship with Pirelli's engineers and take a good look at the tyres to understand their characteristics. We did a lot of laps and worked though quite a detailed programme, so we have ended the day with a good feel for how the car was behaving with the tyres. We have some more work to do tomorrow and this will leave us in a good position over the winter until testing starts again early next year."
"We very much enjoyed the first day of our new working relationship with Pirelli and thanks to a very straightforward day with the car we were able to complete our full programme," added John Booth, "running various stint lengths and fuel loads with both the medium and soft compound tyres. It is obviously very early days but we were able to get a good feel for the behaviour of the tyres and the results were positive both in terms of laptime and car balance. We were also able to continue running a number of test items for next year's car with very satisfactory results."
Heikki Kovalainen was on duty for Lotus, completing 88 laps with a best time of 1.44.686. "It's good to welcome Pirelli back into our sport," said the Finn, "we had a good day completing the whole programme and the balance of the car felt very comfortable all day. Honestly, I would like to drive the car again tomorrow but now we have a long break until testing starts again in a couple of months and I can't wait to get back in the car next year."
"An interesting and very useful first day of testing," added Mike Gascoyne. "We had no mechanical issues on the car and managed to complete our full programme in 88 laps. The car was ballasted up to the 2011 weight limit for the day and we ran a series of fundamental tests within the parameters we could change with the tyres and in the afternoon we found some clear and useful setup directions for the engineers to work on. We set our quickest lap of the day at the end of the session on a pretty worn set and all of the data gives us very useful information that we will carry over to tomorrow when Jarno is back in the car for his first taste of the new Pirelli tyres."
For Hispania, Pastor Maldonado did many short runs so the Spanish team could try out different adjustments on the car and see how the new tyres responded. The Venezuelan drove a total of 83 laps clocking a best time of 1.45.728.
"I enjoyed being back in the HRT F110 and getting more experience in a Formula 1 car," said the Venezuelan. "We fulfilled our complete testing program in order to get as much data as possible from the new Pirelli tyres. I have now driven with both tyre suppliers, Bridgestone and Pirelli, and what I learnt out of it was that they are very different in their characteristics. Now we are going to analyze today's data and get ready to keep on learning about the tyres."
"With an air temperature of around 30 degrees and a track of 44, today's conditions were ideal for testing the new Pirelli tyres for the first time," said Colin Kolles. "We have worked very hard and we were one of the teams who did a big number of laps. The target of the testing program today was to get as much data about the new tyres as possible, and we fulfilled it completely. Firstly, Pastor Maldonado had to get used to the new tyres, which are also new to us. After his settling in period, he felt more comfortable and could give us more information about the new tyres so that we could learn about them and keep on improving."
To check out our Abu Dhabi test gallery, click here