Pirelli: The name of the test driver soon

Pirelli has announced that in the next few weeks it will communicate the name of the driver who will test the tires in view of the return to Formula One in 2011. Initially the name of Nick Heidfeld, currently third Mercedes GP driver, was approached by the Italian company but it seems that the negotiation is destined to stall so as not to provide Mercedes with an indirect advantage in preparing the car for the next world championship.

There will be two permanent test drivers, one for Formula One and the other for GP2 and on the occasion of their appointment the car for the tests will also be announced.

It seems that at the moment six days of testing have been scheduled before Abu Dhabi but their number is destined to rise, in the meantime Pirelli says: "At the moment we have produced the first scale of models at 50% of the dimensions, for the purposes of wind tunnel. Work is underway on the four components of the compounds and the first prototypes should be released next month. We recently took a test at Paul Richard in France testing GP2 tyres: we completed 120 laps without any problems."

Robert Ferrari