Low temperatures, new Barcelona tarmac cause F1 tyre headache in testing

Low track temperatures and the new track surface at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya left drivers strug🧸gling to manage their tyres through Tuesday's Formu🔯la 1 pre-season test running.

After losing a chunk of last 𓄧week's scheduled testing in Barcelona due to poor weather conditions, teams met blue skies for the start of the second test, albeit with the ambient temperature still hanging around 10ºC.

Low temperatures, new Barcelona tarmac cause F1 tyre headache

Low track temperatures and the new track surface at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya left drivers struꦫggling to manage their tyres through Tuesday's Formula 1 pre-season test running.

After losing a chunk of last week's scheduled testing in Barc🦹elona due to poor weather conditions, teams met blue skies for the start of the second test, albeit with the ambient temperature still hanging around 10ºC.

The cold temperature made it hard for drivers to warm up their tyres, but many still experienced significant blistering and wear across the softer compounds in Pirelli's range, including Haas driv𓄧er Kevin Magnussen.

"It's still sꦡightly tricky with the weather not quite being hot enough for those tyres to completely work as they should. It's a lot better than last week, but still not q🌄uite there to learn and feel confident with what we've learned," Magnussen said.

"The soft rear tyres blistered. In this cold weather, it's not what you expect. So that's 💝pretty surprising. A lot of graining on the𝔍 front left as well for us.

"I don't know about other teams, but we are struggling a little bit to manage the tyres. They don't heat up very quickly, you can't get the lap t🍌ime on the first lap, yet they blister and grain like hell."

Asked if the issues were down to the temperature or the new tarmac, Magnussen said: "I think it's both. This t♏arma♚c needs a lot of temperature.

"The restart stuff we did at the end was impossible. It wouldn't have been possible to do that in a race. I couldn't get my tyr🐼es to work at all. I nearly couldn't even get going from zero, I was just wheel-spinning. I wouldn't have been able to getꦓ heat into my tyres.

"Hopefully it will be warmer in the race here."

Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton added: "The biggest challe𝓰nge we faced today was to get the tyres working properly on this new track surface.

"The medium tyre was difficult to get working; the soft tyre is better for wa🐎rm-up, but suffered with degradation. But we are learning all the time."

Read More