Pirelli: Mercedes did not take advantage of the secret testing

 

After the sports public was shocked by the news that the Mercedes team in Barcelona conducted a three-day test of Pirelli tires, where Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg did more than 1000 test kilometers with this year's car, Paul Hembery stepped in front of the media and tried to calm his passions. He said the contract with the teams allows Pirelli such a call-up of one of the teams for help and that this is actually not unusual. However, he also estimated that Mercedes could not gain anything by testing, because at least they did not officially know which tires they were racing with. “Absolutely not,” Hembery said when asked if testing could help Mercedes find solutions to tire problems. "Testing was not related to this year's season."

Hembery explained that such testing is a constant in other sports as well. “It’s quite common to have 1000 miles of tire testing available with any team. It’s the same with a contract in the WRC World Rally Championship. We can test with a representative car. We have done such testing with another team once before. ”

The testing is expected to be mostly related to the development of tires for next season, with only a small portion going to work on planned changes to this year’s tires for the Canadian GP. “We’re working on solutions for next season and testing different things,” he said. “At Mercedes, they have no idea what we’re really testing. 90 percent of the work was dedicated to next season, only the last few minutes we worked on this year's tires. "

However, Pirelli's explanation did not convince the head of the Red Bull team, Christian Horner, who remains convinced that Mercedes has benefited and therefore demands explanations from the International Automobile Federation FIA.

Photos: Pirelli