Pirelli testing in secret to develop 2020 F1 tyres

With tyre temperature windows in 2019 being too narrow according to many, manufacturer Pirelli are already in advanced stages with their new rubber for the 2020 season, as the Italians have deployed a new testing technique that can be done indoors.

Getting the current rubber in the optimal tyre window to perform at maximum capacity is something that has proven extremely difficult. Too difficult, many teams have told Pirelli, as they want to have wider windows, with Haas in particular struggling massively to be as quick in races as they are in qualifying.

Head of motorsports at Pirelli, Mario Isola, therefore had his work cut out for him, as he revealed how they've been working on the new compound for next season.

"What we are doing for next season is to redesign the construction in order to modify the footprint, and this is mainly to reduce overheating," Isola told Motorsport.com.

"And to design new compounds with new ingredients we are exploring new directions in order to have a wider working range.

"We have been working with some indoor tests to understand how to identify and measure the working range properly because the working range is affected by a lot of different elements."

The tests have thus far been away from any cameras, leaving the public guessing of how the 2020 compound will look, although we did recently get our first look at the new, 18-inch wheels for the 2021 season (see featured image above).

"If you measure the working range of the same tyres and same compound on track, on two different cars, or two different tracks with different asphalt, it is different because it is affected by a lot of different parameters.

"So to identify the working range, we need an indoor test that is repeatable. And this is giving us the opportunity to compare compounds and to understand if we are going in the right direction to have a wider working range or not.

"That is not easy. It is easy to explain now, but for our colleagues to do that is not easy."