2018 Pirelli tyres

2018 F1 tyre testing calendar confirmed

2018 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by

[smr2018test]

Pirelli has confirmed its schedule of tests for the 2018 F1 season. All 10 teams will have the opportunity to contribute to tyre development during the championship.

“We have been able to distribute one dry session to each team,” said sporting director Mario Isola. “All the teams replied in a positive way so we are going to test with all the teams, one dry session.”

Esteban Ocon, Force India, Circuit de Catalunya, 2018
2018 F1 pre-season testing day two in pictures
“Talking about wet we have [fewer] sessions so we have three teams who were available to test in wet and we allocated a wet test to each of these three teams.”

Isola predicted lap times will continue to fall at the resurfaced Circuit de Catalunya in next week’s test and would “probably” fall as low as 1’17.

“We ran a test three weeks ago here with GT cars,” he explained. “At the beginning the Tarmac was very oily, very greasy. Then we had one day of heavy rain. And after that day the Tarmac was really clean and the level of grip was very high, and the lap time for GT cars was a lot faster.”

“So indications, considering they are running in 1’19 in this condition, I would say that probably next week we see one step in lap time. 1’19 was the best time last year so I can imagine they can improve from this 1’19 more than one second.”

“Obviously it’s difficult to judge how much of this because of the new cars, because of the track, because of the tyres. We can make some assumptions but at the end of the day when you have that many elements changing it’s difficult.”

2018 F1 tyre testing calendar

VenueTyresTeam/sDate
Shanghai*SlickForce India17-18 April
FioranoWetFerrari19-20 April
Circuit de CatalunyaSlickMcLaren and Haas15-16 May
Paul RicardWetMercedes30-31 May
VallelungaSlickToro Rosso14-15 June
SilverstoneSlickRed Bull and Williams10-11 July
Paul RicardWetMcLaren and Haas5-6 September
Paul RicardSlickMercedes and Ferrari20-21 September
SuzukaSlickRenault9-10 October
Autodromo Hermanos RodriguezSlickSauber30 October

Go ad-free for just £1 per month

>> Find out more and sign up

2018 F1 season

Browse all 2018 F1 season articles

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

2 comments on “2018 F1 tyre testing calendar confirmed”

  1. Clever to test at Paul.

  2. The best time last year in testing was 1:18.634, though.

Comments are closed.