Last Updated on February 5 2025, 10:14 am

While the world is obsessed with the plethora of executive orders the new president of the Untied States has been making, Formula One is quietly going about its pre-season business as usual. Last week Lewis Hamilton tested for three days in the 2023 SF-23 Ferrari car but the test was cut short as the seven times world champion destroyed his car in a high speed crash in the revised final sector of the Barcelona circuit.

Charles Leclerc was forced to sit out the final afternoon of the test as the Scuderia engineers declared the broken Ferrari car irreparable in the interviewing hours before the Monegasque was due to take the wheel for the final afternoon.

Now the French media are reporting Lando Norris was quickest in the Pirelli test held in France, ahead of the Ferrari pair but by just one tenth of a second at the Paul Ricard circuit. Last week McLaren were present at the only circuit in Europe which can be drenched to simulate wet weather running, but today was all about the first running of the Pirelli prototype slick tyres which are set to be the standard come 2026 together with the all new specifications of the 2026 F1 cars.

 

 

 

 

 

Pirelli Begins 2026 Tyre Testing with Smaller Dimensions as Norris Sets the Pace

The tyres for next season remain with an 18 inch rim diameter, yet the rubber will be slightly smaller than the current tyres in both width and external diameter on both front and rear axles.

stipulate the same 18” rim diameter as the current ones, but with a slightly smaller width and external diameter on both the front and rear axles. The Italian tyre manufacture worked with McLaren last week on the 2026 wet tyres with Oscar Piastri completing 120 laps, with a best time of 1’07”008, while the second day saw Lando Norris complete 123 laps, with a best time of 1’07”956. Between them, they covered 840 kilometres, all on a wet track.

Pirelli today kicked off its first slick tyre test of the year, concentrating on it 2026 products. Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton shared driving duties on Tuesday, using the 2024 F1 Ferrari, albeit in ‘mule’ version. The aerodynamic tweaks meant that Ferrari equipped its 2024 F1 car with a smaller front and rear wing in a bid to simulate the lower downforce levels that are expected for next year’s extensive technical overhaul.

The seven-time world champion set a benchmark of 1m15.9s which was a tenth of a second quicker than what Leclerc managed to achieve. McLaren’s Lando Norris was significantly quicker than the Ferrari pair, setting a 1m.15.2 at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. Of course the cars are predominantly the machinery which raced in 2024 but given the expectation is that most F1 teams 2025 racing prototypes will be evolutions of the cars which finished the season in December in Abu Dhabi, the relative tine differences are not completely irrelevant.

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Mule Cars Tested with 2025 Aero Changes as Norris Tops Timesheets Ahead of Hamilton and Leclerc

The cars were in fact ‘mule’ versions of the actual cars which competed in 2024. The modifications included reduced front wings together with other downforce reductions designed to replicate the lower downforce levels which are expected following next years extensive technical overhaul.

Today Hamilton set a benchmark tine of 1.15:9s, a tenth of a second quicker than Leclerc which fans of the seven tines world champion will hope is a precursor to a return to the one lap form which has deserted Hamilton in his final three years with Mercedes AMG F1.

McLaren’s Lando Norris however smashed the best time set by the Ferrari driver recording a tine of 1.15:2, some seven tenth s of a second quicker than either of the Ferrari pair. Following the test, Pirelli’s motorsport director Mario Isola revealed that the Milan-based company will conduct two more test runnings before the pre-season testing kicks off at the Bahrain International Circuit.

“It’s going to be a very busy start to the season for those of our engineers working on development: after this test at Paul Ricard, we have a further two test sessions in the coming two weeks. Both of them are in Spain and will focus on dry weather tyres.

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FIA Reverses Stance on Flexi-Wing Regulations

“On 4 and 5 February, McLaren and Ferrari will be on track at the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit and then, on 12 and 13 at Jerez de la Frontera, Alpine will be working with us on both days, while McLaren and Mercedes will do one day each,” Isola concluded.

Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur explained last week he believed the team and driver who show early season form are most likely to claim the F1 titles at the end of the 2025 season. This is based on the fact that teams will switch their resources much earlier this season to design the F1 cars for 2026 under the biggest regulation change in F1 history.

Yet following Vasseur’s prediction, the FIA have reversed their absolute position stated in November 2024. This stated that the flexi-wing tests which have been current since 2022 would not be altered this year as it would be a “knee jerk reaction.” Having positioned cameras on the F1 cars from the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix onwards in an attempt to measure the level of flex different teams versions of the wings, the FIA declared it was nigh on impossible to compare the results from team to team. 

“One of the challenges in the front wing is that, compared to other parts of the car, the front wing loading is much more varied between cars in a given location and so on. So most tests relate to the load of a certain direction, certain position of application, certain magnitude must not produce a [certain] deformation,” said the FIA head of single seater racing in December last year.

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FIA Acknowledges Limitations

Here the FIA were  admitting there is no real world test possible which takes into consideration how the component relates to the rest of the aerodynamic principles in play from car to car. “The most successful such tests imitate as much as possible what happens in real life with loads and, on the earlier wing for example, it’s reasonably successful. On the front wing, the variety between cars would make that quite difficult.”

It was then announced the FIA would not be changing the static load tests they utilise to decide whether a teams front or rear wings are flexing beyond the presided limits.

“Obviously, there was a lot of hoo-hah about it during the summer and early autumn,” the FIA’s head of single seater racing Nicolas Tombazis surmised. “We had made it quite clear to teams since 2022 at least, that we were not planning to introduce any further tests on the front wing and we stuck to that.”

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FIA’s Surprising U-Turn on Flexible Aero Tests

Yet this weekend the FIA performed a remarkable U-Turn and will in fact implement new types of flexible aero part tests of the F1 cars wings, but only from the Spanish Grand Prix forwards. The new tests were set to be implemented in Imola, but the teams lobbied for longer before all their hard work in the off season is banned.

Yet were the FIA focused on levelling the F1playing field, they would have introduced the new regulation come round three of the year. The smaller teams will have only introduced a minimal version of the flexi wings used by McLaren, and so an early season ban wold hurt the bigger teams more and require they use more of their in season resource to comply with the new rules now thought up by the FIA. \

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Hamilton exploding tyres, Mercedes fault say Pirelli

Pirelli have now been Formula One’s dedicated tyre supplier since 2011. The history of tyres within the sport makes for interesting reading but for most of the first fifty years since the inaugural season in 1950, multiple tyre manufacturers were available for he teams to choose from.

The most recent ‘tyre war’ amongst multiple manufacturers was initiated with the return of Michelin to F1 in 2001. Bridgestone had been the sole tyre provider for the preceding two seasons yet the challenge from Michelin was to eventually see F1 opt for a sole supplier of rubber to the sport.

For the 2005 season, tyre switched mid-race were banned with the result that both Bridgestone and Michelin were forced to develop much harder tyre compounds to withstand a range of demands from various circuits together with a full race distance of 300km. Yet the debacle at the 2005 US Grand Prix put pay to this regulation change as the Michelin tyre runners feared the tyres would explode as the cars developed enormous G-forces around the banked section of the Indianapolis Speedway… READ MORE