The 2017 Formula One World Championship is full of unknowns.
The new regulations will see wider cars, with aerodynamics playing a larger part of the design of the cars as they are set to go around 4 to 5 seconds per lap [circuit depending] quicker.
It’s not known if they will be able to improve overtaking, but they’ll look good trying.
What also isn’t known is if Italian tyre manufacturer Pirelli have developed new compound tyres to the specification asked of them.
For 2017 the tyres are wider and shouldn’t suffer as high degradation as the previous tyres that Pirelli were asked to develop.
However, with limited testing and no testing with the new specification cars for the season, Pirelli are uncertain how their tyres will react come the start of the season and over the months as the season progresses.
Pirelli tested the tyres using modified cars supplied by Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes and whilst these cars were aimed at providing data suitable for 2017, Pirelli are not convinced.
?They lacked a bit of performance, Although the modified cars aimed to simulate the downforce levels we will find, we have not seen the true performance that we will have in 2017. Pirelli?s F1 racing manager Mario Isola told motorsport.com.
?We have seen from the simulations that we have been sent by teams, based on patterns with the new cars, that the performance will be better than those we saw from the [modified] mule cars.
?This leads us to still have some question marks on the feedback that will come from the track in the first tests and the first few races of the world championship.?
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