One of the myths about Formula One pre-season testing in Spain is that the February weather in Barcelona and Jerez is anything approaching warm. The sun shines -- albeit low in the sky -- but often the circuits are spotted with frost in the early mornings, and track temperatures are hardly representative of those seen during the season.
In 2014 F1 had two pre-season tests in Bahrain, giving teams the opportunity to get to know the new hybrid power units in representative conditions. Next year will see dramatic design changes to the cars themselves, added downforce, and a new approach to F1 rubber. But despite the logic of testing somewhere warm next winter, paddock finances point to another two weeks in Catalunya.
In an exclusive interview with ESPN, Pirelli's Paul Hembery talked about the challenges ahead for F1's tyre supplier in light of the changes to cars and tyres alike for the 2017 season.
"The good news is, we do have a test programme," Hembery said. "As we've made people aware, we have started a 24 testing day programme split equally between Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes, who have kindly supported us by developing a version of the 2015 car with an aerodynamic package intended to simulate what will be the effect of the 2017 rule regulations. This of course is a huge step forward. We're making such a dramatic change to the tyre width.
"Challenges? The downforce increases are substantial. The performance requirements are to improve by five seconds compared to the 2015 lap times. In reality, having seen maybe a two-second improvement already this season, next year it is likely that we will substantially improve on the lap time.
"The initial simulation data that we have would suggest, as I say, that would be easily surpassed. Of course we won't actually see the real cars until we get through to pre-season testing next year. The change is vast, increasing the width of front and rear tyres by six and eight centimetres respectively, which looks good. It makes the cars look very dramatic, with both the front and rear track increased by 20 centimetres each. "The intention there is that it will make it easier for teams to overtake; if they're following another car [we want to ensure] that the tyres won't reach a temperature peak, which has stopped the drivers from overtaking on some occasions. Of course, that will only work if we also reduce the impact of the weight of the aero of one car from another. The suggestions are that that will be improved in the aero. I wouldn't say there is universal opinion on that."
Testing their tyres has long been a problem for Pirelli, thanks to the sport's understandable focus on keeping costs -- and team travel time -- to a minimum. But with such dramatic changes expected for 2017, Pirelli have finally managed to negotiate much-needed days of mule car testing. But are the agreed test days the ideal solution from a Pirelli perspective?
"I think if you said to somebody, 'how should you do it correctly?', you'd go to a circuit where you race so you have all the data, and you'd go in conditions that represent the conditions that you're going to race in," Hembery said.
"In January and February, we will have a good indication when we do our testing now with the three teams. "We've tested at Fiorano and Mugello in early August, where the temperature at the moment is very, very warm. So we will start to get some very clear indications of testing with the mule cars that we have this year. As I said, there is no substitution for getting on the actual cars, which we will get next year and at the moment we're undecided where the locations are.
"From a purely tyre-maker perspective it would be better to be in somewhere warm during that period of time. In the past few years we have been to Bahrain, which allowed us to have a clear indication of the tyre performance at much earlier stage. I understand that teams believe there is a certain cost penalty for doing that, but then again it is a sport that has a few billion spent on it. If the willingness is there I'm sure the funding can be found.
"One session in Bahrain would already be a big step, so we would know where we are during the season," Hembery continued. "That might not be able to affect what we do for Australia, but it means we can start working earlier if there are changes needed. We're obviously aiming not to make changes, however the changes are so important that there may well be things that we understand only by going on the track with the 10 or 11 different chassis that we have in Formula One."
And if the teams decide that they can't afford a warm-weather test, and we are restricted to a fortnight's pre-season testing in Spain in February, what impact would that have on Pirelli's ability to test effectively?
"We can do a lot with simulation and indoor drum testing," Hembery acknowledged. "You do the majority of work there, but the interaction between car, tyre and tarmac still requires going out and testing and looking at the tarmac. If that's all been changed, it changes completely the dynamic of the package. In reality you still need to go out on the track and do that testing.
"We need to have a good understanding how the compounds are working to understand if we've got the scaling right between them, if we have the degradation levels right or whether it's too low or too high. [The teams] are still asking for two-stop strategy, which will become harder with less degradation -- why would you change your tyres? At the moment it is primarily due to performance.
"If we want to have a quicker understanding of how the tyres or compounds in particular are performing, we would need to go to somewhere like Bahrain as early as possible."