Hembery denies that Vettel gained an advantage from Pirelli testing

Pirelli Motorsport chief Paul Hembery is adamant that Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel’s huge relative pace increase compared to its rivals this year, is not due to the extra tyre development testing that the team did last year.

 It has been suggested that this could be the reason that the Ferrari team has a much better understanding of the tyres compared to the likes of Mercedes, with Vettel doing around 2000km of testing compared to Mercedes’ 250km and Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff claiming to the Daily Express that it was "definitely an advantage" for Ferrari.

However Hembery has said that this is not the case. He claimed: "Yes, Sebastian did a lot of testing," He told Formula1.com. "It was very intense and he gave us a lot of feedback. We thank him for that. That is what we wanted: the top drivers giving us good feedback. But because he didn’t really know what he was testing - he was blind-testing - it might have helped him psychologically, but I doubt it helped practically."

He also added he thought that Mercedes’ problems was more on a track to track basis adding: "Actually Mercedes’ issue is linked a bit to certain circuits: in Barcelona they were fine - and in Silverstone and Spa they will be as well. It’s the lower-grip circuits where they’ve had a few more problems, but I am sure they will resolve any issues as we go through the season."

Sam Gale