F1 | Pirelli, Isola on 18-inch tyres: “First positive indications”

In a chat given to Corriere della Sera, Mario Isola expressed his own assessment of the first official release of the 18-inch tyres, brought to the track at Le Castellet by Sergey Sirotkin, underlining how the first feedback has been absolutely positive, especially for what it's about behavior and management.

Despite the youth of the product, in fact, Pirelli has received a lot of positive feedback from the rider, underlining how the performance margin is still quite high. A positive path that the Italian manufacturer hopes to confirm during the next tests.

“The debut of the 18 inches was positive”, said Mario Isola. “The behavior and management was as expected and the performance still has some room for improvement. Now we should analyze the data carefully, so as to make a comparison with the pilot's feedback (Sergey Sirotkin in this case. ed.)”.

On the support of the teams he added: “We offer the teams every single piece of data from our teams, so they can modify the cars according to their needs. The same information is also destroyed from teams that do not participate in these work days."

Obviously, there was a reference to Ferrari's choice not to participate: “I expect they will do so in 2020. In the meantime they have chosen to deepen development on next season's tyres.”

“We will continue to work in the direction that has been asked of us,” he concluded. “We want to review compounds and construction methods to reduce overheating, so as to give riders and teams a wider window of use.”