Hembery: 2017 tyre development will be on-going

Paul Hembery is confident Pirelli will improve their wet weather tyres next season but admits they will need time to test with the actual 2017 cars.

Pirelli has already spent several days testing their new wider 2017 tyres during this year’s championship.

Using Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes, the Italian tyre manufacturer even devoted a few days to their wet weather rubber.

However, Hembery concedes they won’t be able to perfect the tyres until such a time as they run them on the new 2017 cars.

But, with the tyre manufacturer permitted days of in-season testing, the Pirelli motorsport director believes they will be able to develop them as the season progresses.

“We’ve had four or five days of simulated wet-weather running, watering the various tracks we’ve been to, to try to get the wet-weather tyres right for next year, and we’ve not been testing on the correct cars,” he told Autosport.

“Next year’s cars we’re not going to get until February/March, so it will be on-going.

“The advantage we have this time around compared to previous years is we can test in-season on the actual cars, and that’s a huge change.

“We obviously can’t say everything will be perfect from day one, I’m sure we’ll find a few surprises, but at least we now have the opportunity to work on change through the year.

“That, for us, is an absolutely wonderful situation to be in having gone three years without one day of testing.”