Pirelli's Director of Motorsport Paul Hembery has said the heavy tyre wear suffered by teams in pre-season testing has been down to the cool conditions.
Drivers struggled with tyre graining, praising the speed at which they heated up but branding them "extreme" or "surprising" at the wear rate.
Pirelli increased the softness of the tyre compounds for 2012, after joining Formula 1 as its sole tyre manufacturer in 2011. The first seven races proved to be a lottery, due to teams struggling to work out the tyres. However it soon calmed down and races moved from three to one stops.
The Italian firm have made their 2013 tyres even softer, roughly a compound higher in comparison to the 2012 tyres. The high degradation suffered in testing was due to the conditions says Hembery.
In a statement from Pirelli, he said "The teams experienced quite high degradation in Barcelona, and that was really down to the weather,"
"The conditions we had in Barcelona are far from typical of the rest of the season, with much cooler ambient and track temperatures than we would normally race in, and even some rain on the final day. This put the tyres outside of their usual working ranges, which led to problems such as graining.
"The conditions were particularly unsuited to the super soft tyre, due to the circuit layout and the roughness of the surface in addition to the cold temperatures. Coupled with the fact that teams are still making big set-up adjustments to their new cars and trying out our complete range of our tyres to optimise the package, we saw levels of degradation that are not typical.
"Once we get to Melbourne the tyres should be much more within their intended working range, which will eliminate the unusual amount of degradation that some teams have experienced."
So the firms Director or Motorsport has given the drivers some reassurance that this will not become the norm in Australia, but we will have to wait and see how the tyres react at the Melbourne circuit.
Pirelli are bringing the red marked Super-Soft and the yellow market Soft tyre compounds to Australia, as well as the usual Intermediate and Wet tyres.
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Pirelli increased the softness of the tyre compounds for 2012, after joining Formula 1 as its sole tyre manufacturer in 2011. The first seven races proved to be a lottery, due to teams struggling to work out the tyres. However it soon calmed down and races moved from three to one stops.
The Italian firm have made their 2013 tyres even softer, roughly a compound higher in comparison to the 2012 tyres. The high degradation suffered in testing was due to the conditions says Hembery.
In a statement from Pirelli, he said "The teams experienced quite high degradation in Barcelona, and that was really down to the weather,"
"The conditions we had in Barcelona are far from typical of the rest of the season, with much cooler ambient and track temperatures than we would normally race in, and even some rain on the final day. This put the tyres outside of their usual working ranges, which led to problems such as graining.
"The conditions were particularly unsuited to the super soft tyre, due to the circuit layout and the roughness of the surface in addition to the cold temperatures. Coupled with the fact that teams are still making big set-up adjustments to their new cars and trying out our complete range of our tyres to optimise the package, we saw levels of degradation that are not typical.
"Once we get to Melbourne the tyres should be much more within their intended working range, which will eliminate the unusual amount of degradation that some teams have experienced."
So the firms Director or Motorsport has given the drivers some reassurance that this will not become the norm in Australia, but we will have to wait and see how the tyres react at the Melbourne circuit.
Pirelli are bringing the red marked Super-Soft and the yellow market Soft tyre compounds to Australia, as well as the usual Intermediate and Wet tyres.
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