McLaren and Mercedes will today begin a two-day tyre test at Silverstone as Pirelli continues the development of next year’s tyres.
It’s a crucial outing for the sport’s official tyre supplier, with a decision set to be made following it on whether F1 will indeed push ahead with banning tyre blankets.
“After this test, the Formula 1 Commission is going to decide if, for 2024, we ban the blankets or not,” explained Mario Isola, Pirelli’s motorsport director.
“What we are doing is that after the test, we are doing a report, an executive summary for team principals so they don’t have to read the 40 or 50 pages.
“We will supply also all the data to the tyre expert of the team, so it’s not just the summary.
“Then I hope they are going to decide based on the data if we want to continue for another year with blankets.”
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Formula 1 has headed down the road of attempting to ban tyre blankets in the interests of sustainability.
Initially, the ban was set to be introduced with the sport’s move to larger diameter wheels in 2022 but was pushed back to 2023.
However, testing during last season, prompted concerns from drivers, the decision was taken to delay the ban a further year.
Concerns remain with warm-up and performance in all temperatures a key consideration.
“The tyres that work without blankets are different from current tyres,” Isola explained.
“You cannot expect that have a warm-up phase that is exactly the same with the warm-up phase of the current tyres that are heated at 70 degrees.
“And we didn’t have the possibility to test the tyres in all the conditions because we don’t have constantly cold, cold conditions at the moment.
“When we test it in cold conditions, I remember at one test with Mercedes, for example, in Paul Ricard, it was at the beginning of the season with the compounds that are not the final version of the compounds, we were in the early stages of the development.
“So the point is that we have to accept that when tyres are running without blankets, they are different,” he added.
“We need to understand which is the impact on race strategies because obviously we don’t want the show to be damaged by the new situation.
“But the direction that we agreed with all the f1 stakeholders is to reduce the impact on the environment and to make the sport more sustainable, and this is what we are doing.”
This week’s test is, therefore, a key juncture in whether the ban is introduced, delayed, or abandoned.
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