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Pirelli says there are 'positive signs' after their tyre test in FP2
Pirelli chief engineer Simone Berra has said the tyre test that was conducted during the second free practice session at the Mexican Grand Prix is already showing some "positive signs". FP2 was reserved by the Italian tyre company as a session for testing the 2025 tyres, with teams and drivers having 90 minutes to test these prototypes that they will be using next year.
Drivers who took part in FP1 had to take part in the tyre test for the whole 90-minute session However, for those drivers who did not drive in the first free practice session after some rookies took their seats, they were allowed to use the extra half-an-hour to collect data for the rest of the weekend in Mexico City.
In short, according to Pirelli, no big surprises during the second free practice session in Mexico. Despite not being able to make full use of all the time, partly due to George Russell's crash, Pirelli was able to collect the desired data. For drivers that did not compete in FP1, Russell's crash meant they did not collect as much data as they would have hoped, putting them on the back foot for Saturday's running.
However, because of the data collected in the tyre test, Pirelli were able to find out that the evolution of on-track performance was significant compared to the present.
Pirelli's reaction to the FP2 tyre test
"As for the Mexico City race weekend, there were few surprises compared to what we had expected. First and foremost, in the first session, there was practically no graining. It’s true that there were not many very long runs, but on a track where in the past, graining played a significant role, that’s already a positive sign," said Berra after the second free practice session.
"First of all, we can say that the new compounds generally proved to be more mechanically resistant than the current ones, which should reduce the phenomenon of graining. Digging down further into the detail, we saw some rather promising and improved C4 options, both in terms of performance and degradation. As for the C5, there are solutions that seem to contain the degradation more, while of the C6s, there is one that seems clearly better, but we need to look at how to position it compared to the C5 in the 2025 range," concluded the Pirelli engineer.
This article was created in collaboration with Estéban den Toom
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