Paul Hembery thinks teams will not show true pace in testing

Pirelli Head of Motorsport Paul Hembery expects that teams will be hiding their true pace at Barcelona testing. As 2017 technical regulations are taking an overhaul for 2017, there is a chance for many teams to make significant  gains from where they finished last year. However Hembery believes that we won't find out who is where until the season gets to China or Bahrain.

“We really won’t know in Barcelona testing where the teams are as that’s a period where they won’t want to show their hand,” Hembery said. “There will be a lot of people trying to hide their true performance level or maybe wondering what they need to do because they can’t even get close to some of the teams who are maybe sandbagging. It'll be more when we get to China and Bahrain before we see the true performance of the cars," he added.

Hembery also spoke about the 2017 tyres, which will be much wider than previous years. “We’re working on an on-going development during the season, which is something we’re allowed to do this season as before we weren’t allowed to test,” he explained. “In the last three years, I think we had three days of testing. Now we have up to 25 car days in a season, so we have a programme to change the wet tyres during the season.”