Nico Hulkenberg said it was hard to draw any conclusions about whether Pirelli has improved its wet weather tyres after this morning’s test.
The Circuit de Catalunya was artificially soaked in order for drivers to test the wet and intermediate tyres. But fine weather conditions meant the track dried out quickly and little running was done on the full wet weather tyres.
Hulkenberg said teams were wary of damaging their new cars. “Obviously early in the season it’s a bit of a risk with teams, we don’t have that many spare parts,” he said. “There’s always a balance to be had.”
“I went out once on full wets, once on inters, just to see how it goes and get a basic idea. It worked fine, to be honest.”
“But we couldn’t really test very deeply regarding aquaplaning and all these kinds of subjects, we’ll find that out during the race weekend I guess.”
However Romain Grosjean believes Pirelli have “made a good step from last year” with the full wet weather tyre.
“There’s less problem overheating the rear, less problem losing the temperatures, that was good,” said the Haas driver.
“Then we switched to the intermediates and the track was drying very quickly. The intermediates had a hard time but the performance was there.”
“It just needs to hold on a bit longer because after one lap was starting to fly apart.”
2017 F1 season
- Sepang pays Haas compensation for Grosjean’s 2017 crash
- Williams revenues rose in 2017 after Bottas deal with Mercedes
- Australian Grand Prix cost government £56 million last year
- “Grand Prix Driver” takes you inside McLaren’s nightmare final year with Honda
- Undisputed champion: 10 titles name Hamilton top driver of 2017
Tristan
2nd March 2017, 21:47
I’m amazed given the money involved that they can’t run constant sprinklers around the track all day. That being said I’m glad they don’t as it would be mighty wasteful. Kind of a shame though because in it looks like a track for inters from the get go with the lack of standing water.