Pirelli’s Mario Isola: “We can be pleased with how the three days of testing went”

Mario Isola says Pirelli Motorsport can be pleased with how the first real test with their eighteen-inch tyres on 2022 machinery went at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya last week, with plenty of laps being run by all ten teams.

Before the test in Spain, Pirelli had only run their eighteen-inch tyres on mule cars, so to see them in action on the real thing represented the next step for Formula 1’s tyre supplier.

Isola knew time was being spent by the teams to understand how their 2022 machines would work alongside the new tyres, although not much attention was paid towards lap times.

However, with lap times around one second slower than what was seen during last years’ Spanish Grand Prix, Isola is expecting lap times to be faster than the 2021 machines before the end of the year.

“We can be pleased with how the three days of testing went, which of course represented the debut of our 18-inch tyres on these new single-seaters, with all the tyre testing up to now having been carried out using only mule cars,” said Isola.

“The teams and drivers all focussed on gaining confidence with the new models and finding the best possible set up, so it’s too early to talk about the performance gap between the compound or degradation levels.

“This explains why the C2 and C3 compounds in the middle of the range, which are most often used here in Montmelo, were run more often than the others during the test.

“Setting the fastest flying lap obviously wasn’t the main objective, but we still saw some interesting lap times; around a second off the quickest race lap from last year’s Spanish Grand Prix. This makes it probable that these cars will end up even faster than their predecessors by the end of the season.”

Credit: Pirelli Motorsport