Pirelli’s tyres are on course to demand drivers make two stops on a regular basis in races during the forthcoming season, according to the Italian firm’s motorsport director Paul Hembrey.
Formula 1’s new sole tyre supplier has deliberately developed tyres that will be more challenging for drivers to manage during the course of races in 2011 in a bid to add to the spectacle, and Pirelli has been pleased with the performance of its new rubber so far.
After the conclusion of the second pre-season test in Jerez over the weekend, Hembrey says the data Pirelli has managed to collect from the performance of the tyres over longer runs shows that in most circumstances drivers won’t be able to make one set of tyres last almost an entire race distance.
“From what we learned from those [teams’ long runs] so far, we believe that we’re still on course to see two pit stops per race, which obviously might be one stop on some circuits and three stops on others, depending on the individual cars and track characteristics.
“A number of drivers have mentioned to me that our tyres are going to be great fun to race with, which is exactly what we are aiming for.”
With a number of teams having continued to encounter teething problems with their 2011 cars, Hembrey says the relative lack of mileage for some teams also didn’t help Pirelli’s data-gathering process – although he has nonetheless been pleased with the reliability of its tyres.
“We’ve accumulated a huge amount of data, which we will now be analysing closely before the next test in just a few day’s time in Barcelona,” he added.
“Unfortunately there were several red flags over the four days here due to cars going off and other non-tyre related incidents, which meant that there were quite a few teams that did not manage to complete the full programmes that they anticipated.
“That affected us to some extent too but from our general point of view, we enjoyed perfect reliability once more and saw some longer runs than we had seen previously at Valencia.”
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