Pirelli frustrated by lack of new deal

Italian tyre manufacturers Pirelli have hit out at Formula One for allowing the contract negotiations over next season drag on for so long.

With only seven months until the start of the new 2014 Formula One World Championship the sport currently does not have an official tyre manufacturer signed up.

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone may well have all the teams signed up provisionally to a new Concorde agreement and he may well have around 20 tracks signed up for the forthcoming campaign, but as yet the teams have no wheels to race on.

That’s because Formula One and Pirelli have yet to sign a new deal for after the end of this current season.

Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery has called upon the FIA to agree a new deal to enable themselves to prepare for the upcoming season: ‘It is the most bizarre situation,’ he told the media before confirming that they had agreed a commercial deal with most teams.

One of those teams who would like the scenario sorted is McLaren.

McLaren’s Jonathan Neale believes that if Formula One were to opt-out of their current ongoing agreement with Pirelli and change tyre suppliers at such at late stage it could well be detrimental to some of the F1 teams.

‘If we were to get a late change, from someone coming into the sport late notice, of course we would work around that and work with whoever the FIA chose. he told a Vodafone phone-in as quoted by Autosport Magazine.

‘It would be the same for everybody, so if someone throws in a curveball at the last minute I guess we’d all have to recover. But there’d be some winners and losers in that.’

If Formula One were to look towards a new tyre manufacturer for 2014 who could it be? Well Hankook and Bridgestone have already ruled themselves out of replacing Pirelli, while towards the end of last month reports in Germany suggested that Michelin could be open to a return to Formula One.