Pirelli Welcomes de la Rosa on Board

Official confirmation has been given of Pedro de la Rosa’s appointment as Nick Heidfeld’s replacement at Pirelli. The Italian tyre maker welcomed the Spanish F1 driver to its team at a press conference in Istanbul held to mark half a century of Pirelli’s presence in Turkey, the location where all Formula One, GP2 and GP3 tyres for the 2011 season will be produced.

“I’m really pleased to be joining Pirelli,” said de la Rosa. “Tyre testing is something that I have always enjoyed as it is a very big challenge, especially in Formula One. The information you can get from telemetry and sensors is valuable, but nothing replaces the individual feeling of a driver with new tyres so I hope I can be a real asset to Pirelli. There’s not a lot of time left and a huge amount of work to do, but I’m very much looking forward to it and I am sure that our collaboration will be a success. A lot of useful work has been done already and now we have the opportunity of taking it forward.”

Pirelli completed two days of testing at Monza last week, which concentrated on defining the construction of the new Formula One tyres. Co-tester Romain Grosjean completed a number of long runs consisting of 30 to 40 laps each, in order to check the durability and consistency of the tyre in warm conditions. Pirelli reports the tyres stood up to the testing well, particularly considering the demands the Monza circuit’s fast straights and ‘aggressive’ kerbs place upon tyres.

“Romain jumped in to do some durability testing and did an excellent job,” commented Pirelli’s Motorsport Director Paul Hembery. “The objective of this test was to confirm the structural specification of the tyres we will use for the first time at the test in Abu Dhabi, and we now move on to working on our rain tyres and compound definition. Moving forwards, we will also be joined by Pedro de la Rosa, who has the benefit of having the most recent Formula One experience and is a renowned tester. So far, everything has gone according to plan and we’re pleased to report that we are only about a second per lap off the times of our predecessors, which is a great achievement.”

Pirelli’s next round of Formula One tests will take place in Spain in early October, where de la Rosa will take the wheel of the Toyota TF109 for the first time.