Mario Isola surprised by the speed of the 2019 cars but is happy with the tyres

Pirelli Motorsport boss Mario Isola is surprised by how quick the 2019 breed of car is. The quickest lap time in 2018 was just under 1 second slower than that of 2019. Isola is shocked by this as the new rules were meant to slow the cars down. 

“What’s perhaps more surprising is the pace of the cars at this point in the season,” said Isola to The CheckeredFlag. 

“[They] are they going faster than last year’s test, despite being 10 kilograms heavier." 

When speaking after winter testing in Barcelona, Isola seemed happy with the way that the tyres were performing. 

“We’ve had eight productive days of testing, with teams accumulating plenty of running in generally good conditions, although – as expected at this time of year – without reaching the temperatures we anticipate during the season.”

“Considering this, we are satisfied that all five compounds are performing as we planned, even though the softest compound is not really suited to Barcelona,” Isola continued.

“As usual, during the second week of testing, teams were sampling a wider range of compounds and targeting performance and race procedures in preparation for Australia.

“We experienced a bit of graining in cooler temperatures, which should disappear in warmer weather, and no blistering.

“It’s hard to get a precise read on degradation in these conditions.

“At the moment we’re seeing a gap of around 0.6 to 0.7 seconds between each of the compounds seen on track in Barcelona, which should translate to our target of about 0.9 seconds on a longer circuit in warmer weather.”

The new tyre system should be simpler for the fans to understand, but as we experienced during testing, at high speed, it is still hard to tell which tyre is which!