Leading global tyre manufacturer Pirelli has been testing the Prototype of F1 2021 tyres in FP2 and confirmed that all the F1 teams will get to test the tyres in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi. Pirelli was given a deadline to decide which tyre version is to be used in 2020-F1 racing.
Different prototypes were tested across the 10 teams at the Algarve International Circuit, and everyone will have access to the F1 2021 tyres for the first 30minutes of FP2 at one of the closing three races of the season.
The new construction is intended to improve durability since tyre issues were seen at Silverstone earlier this season when Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz, all suffered tyre failures towards the end of the British Grand Prix. Therefore, Pirelli has been working hard to utilize every sec of the allotted 30 minutes sessions to collect data regarding the new tyres.
Pirelli's F1 boss Mario Isola stated - "We tested the new prototypes in Portimao and made an analysis of the result of the test, collecting all the feedback from drivers and all the telemetry data
"It was a good validation, in difficult conditions with a new track and so on. But we had a good result.
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"We identified a prototype that is an improvement, in our opinion, compared to the current specification.
"All the prototypes we took to Portimao had a higher level of integrity. What we were missing was the driveability and the performance of the tyres on track.
"We supplied different tyres to the teams and identified a combination of a new front and a new rear that are an improvement, and we sent a request to the FIA for the homologation of the new prototypes."
Regarding the plan for FP2 testing of the final choice, Isola said: "This was the first time we supplied different prototypes to different teams. In general in the past, when we supplied prototypes it was two sets of the same one across all the teams and drivers.
"That means not all the drivers and teams tested the prototype that we decided to nominate for 2021.
"So we are in discussion with the FIA and the teams to test again the selected prototype in one of the next races."
