Pirelli release dates and teams for 2019 Tyre testing

Pirelli has come out with the dates of the tyre testing programme for the 2019 F1 season, with all 10 teams set to feature in the programme at different stages during the upcoming season.

Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren will in fact also undertake some wet weather running  on the Tuesday/Wednesday after the Chinese, Spanish, British, Japanese and Mexican GPs.

“We’ve defined the calendar with all the teams,” said Pirelli boss, Mario Isola.

“It is good that we have been able to distribute one dry session to each team.

“We offered to test to all the teams, and all the teams replied in a positive way.

“Talking about wet tyres, we have less sessions, we have three teams who were also available to test on wets, and we allocated wet tests to these three teams.” he added.

The teams will run ‘blind’ initially having no information about the tyre that they are running on so as to not involve any kind of personal bias.

Pirelli wants teams to use their race drivers or at max experienced test drivers for this testing.

2018 Pirelli testing schedule

April 17-18 Shanghai* Slick (Force India)
April 19-20 Fiorano Wet (Ferrari)
May 15-16 Barcelona Slick (McLaren/Haas)
May 30-31 Paul Ricard Wet (Mercedes)
June 14-15 Vallelunga Slick (Toro Rosso)
July 10-11 Silverstone Slick (Red Bull/Williams)
September 5-6 Paul Ricard Wet (McLaren)
September 20-21 Paul Ricard Slick (Mercedes/Ferrari)
October 9-10 Suzuka Slick (Renault)
October 30 Mexico Slick (Sauber)

*To be confirmed

Brazil has been dropped from the list as McLaren team members were targeted by robbers last year and hence won’t feature this time round.