Pirelli's new 18-inch concept tyres formed the center of attention at Silverstone, with Lotus F1 Team reserve driver Charles Pic giving the new design its debut on Wednesday morning.
Pic headed out shortly after 9am in the current Lotus E22 equipped with the new 18-inch tyres and completed 14 laps of the Silverstone circuit. With the concept tyre designed principally to showcase aesthetics rather than performance, and a general-purpose compound, the lap times were not the focus. Instead, the objective was to gauge reaction to the very different new design, which received the thumbs up from most observers.
Pirelli's motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: "In our view, the new tyres looked stunning fitted to the Lotus, and the reaction has already been felt all over the world. These are just a prototype concept, but if the teams decided that they wanted us to proceed in this direction, we have the capability to carry on development in this area and come up with a production-ready version in a comparatively short space of time. We've heard a lot of opinions already and we look forward to canvassing other opinions in the coming weeks and months. Even though performance wasn't by any means priority here, the new tyres still behaved exactly in line with our expectations, so we're clearly potentially at the beginning of a huge development curve, with the wheel and tyre size rules having remained unaltered for many years. These new tyres were clearly the focus of the test, but of course we managed to complete a lot of work for next year and the shorter term as well, with the two days of dedicated tyre testing from Ferrari, Marussia, Lotus and Red Bull as well. Having learned a lot from the previous tyre tests in Bahrain and Barcelona, we were now able to carry out a lot of more targeted work for 2015, on a fast and demanding circuit."
