How Pirelli is testing 2026 F1 tire without 2026 cars

Pirelli has entered the next stage of preparing her small tires for the 2026 Formula 1 season Ferrari And McLaren This week conducts testing tasks of your hard tire compounds in Barcelona.

Got a lot of attention Lewis Hamilton Continuing his preparation with its new Italian employer with team-met Charles Lakeler And McLaren’s Lando NorisEnd of scale.

While Hamilton would have benefited from the time of more seats in one Ferrari from the previous year, the latest procedures, steering wheels, Ferrari Power Unit and so on, the biggest beneficiary from the test is Pirlli. Italian tire manufacturer is narrow against it-which is 25 mm at the front and 30 mm in the back, and 30 mm in diameter, 720 mm to 705 mm-710 mm in front, front, forward, next different -Can be used on different cars. Year.

The difficulty for Pirelli is that there is no representative car to test its new rubber as the new -for -2026 cars have low drags and low downforce generated by flooring and defuse.

Initial plans to reduce the overall downforce by 40 percent have been watered up to about 15 percent after the time of slow lap, which is now expected to be higher according to the current performance levels. But the new generation of cars is quite different as to how and where they produce, so Pirelli has to rely on the incomplete solution of mule cars-2022-2024-202-2024 with sorting wings with machinery-your new rubber collect real life data from your new rubber To do.

After an initial test with Aston Martin in September-in its 2022 models-and recently running in Lestlet, Ferrari and McLaren worked with very low wing levels in recent cars in Barcelona, ​​which complete Differently the flat is visible with the mainplane. You will see some rather than the high-dounge Montamelo circuit in Baku or Las Vegas.

The overall downfores levels of these mule cars will be close to the commencement of relatively -2026 specifications, but because the cars are so different that it is still difficult for Pirelli to reinstate the load barely, it will be subject to its tires. Therefore, it is being fed regular simulation from teams to stay ahead of the curve.

“Earlier the tests were mainly dedicated to understanding how mule cars are working, because they are obviously different,” Pirelli’s Motorsport chief Mario Isola told Motorsport.com. “The only thing we can do is that the teams have to be updated continuously for 2026 simulation, basically. We have to update our knowledge and update our construction according to the data received by us. .

“We can’t just rely on mule cars because it won’t be intelligent, and we will continue to provide them a virtual model of tires to use them in their simulator and they will come back to us with their response. And this is right We should continue the direction. “

To reduce both of them overall and change how it arises will have a major impact on the nature of the load of small tires of 2026, under which they are going to be subject to. It is important for Pireli to get internal construction of your new tires in the right ballpark. Any fine-tuning can be done through strengthening the compounds.

Italians are not only keeping in mind the performance of 2026, as the F1 squads always gain rapidly at the beginning of a regulative cycle, and so Pirelli must have enough headrooms for high tire load under the line.

An important challenge added to the mixture is the upcoming X-mode, a DRS-like form of active aerodynamics that changes the angle of front and rear wings on the strats for high top speeds, as opposite to the standard configuration that dubbed the standard configuration Has gone. -Method.

“We cannot generate these downforce levels with X-Mode and Z-Mode, it is impossible,” Isola explained. “So, we have to understand what is the best compromise for testing and when we try to correct data from simulation with data collected on the track. The first step is to define the profile and construction. We had a good starting point with Aston Martin, I would say.

“We know this is a challenge, because in any case the teams do not want to lose any performance compared to the current cars, and the tires are small, low loading capacity and so on. Also, the idea for having a tire is not heavy, but is still able to maintain the load and maintain the same performance as the current tire. “

This is not the first time Pirelli is chasing a moving goal with one hand behind his back. But Isola reported that the challenge for 2026 was probably a little easier than in 2017, when F1 went into large and comprehensive cars with much more downfores, which was impossible to repeat with a mule car at the time. F1’s step for ground-effect based cars for 2022 was also a challenging proposal.

Isola earlier said in a roundateable, “This is a very similar situation that we had for 2017 and 2022, when we had to develop a full new tire for the entire new car, so it is nothing new for us, “Isola said in an earlier round table.

“It was super difficult in 2016 as it expected a lot of downforce cars and the performance was five or six seconds faster than the previous year, so it was impossible to repeat such a performance.

“But the way you receive loads with current cars, it is completely different from the new, for example. And on straps, we still have a lot of load, while at high speed in 2026 we have less Should be loaded, so comparison is not the same.

Photos from Pirelli Barcelona Testing