Pirelli will use the former Renault team’s 2010 car for private track testing this year, the sport’s official tyre supplier announced on Wednesday.
Until now, the Italian marque has tested with Toyota’s 2009 car, the TF109, which was deemed now too outdated to use for the next generation of Pirelli tyre.
“The Toyota is no longer able to generate the same sort of forces that we need to simulate in order to meet the current requirements of formula one,” said motor sport director Paul Hembery.
Another reason is that the Toyota’s fuel tank was not big enough to simulate a race-load of fuel, for the current regulations that came into force in 2010. Pirelli said the Renault R30, originally raced by Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov, will be run in plain black carbon, driven by a test driver whose identity will be revealed “later this month”.
The car will be adapted to simulate this year’s regulations, and run by Pirelli’s own technicians, “with no team member connected to a current Formula One team” in order to “ensure complete impartiality”.
Pirelli said it will test four or five times this year, beginning in May, with an observer from each F1 team invited to attend.
Source:GMM
