Pirelli has confirmed it will hold a two-day wet tyre test at the Paul Ricard circuit at the end of January.
The test will run on the 25th and 26th of January with McLaren, Ferrari and Red bull taking part. No announcement has been made regarding the drivers that will be involved in the testing or how the testing program will run but we can expect details on this in due course. This will solely be a wet tyre test with no further compounds being tested.
To ensure neither of the three teams taking part will gain any advantage the FIA will have representatives in each garage to ensure all three teams are working within the strict guidelines set by Pirelli and agreed by the FIA. They will also have to use their respective 2015 specification cars and no upgrades are allowed either to the car itself or to their standard set up specifications.
Parts of the note Pirelli sent to the teams is below.
“Run plans will be entirely defined by Pirelli and agreed with FIA,” and that “FIA observers [will be] present in garage.
“This is in order to monitor that only the tests dictated by Pirelli are performed. FIA observers will also have driver radio and full access to the team.”
“The reports would be sent to all the teams, not just the team that is testing. This will also include lap times and sector times.”
“No telemetry channels will be shared between teams but some information coming from the analysis of the telemetry (comparisons of prototype vs base) will be included in the Pirelli report.”
It is a bizarre move for Mercedes not to put themselves forward for this test considering their two main competitors will be there, regardless of if there’s any advantage gained normally you would expect them to be keeping a close eye on their rivals.
