Teams to test modified soft tyres

Although the high degradation of Pirelli's tyres caused a few surprises in early testing, Pirelli's motorsport chief Paul Hembery thinks that teams have made a lot of progress in understanding how to get the best out of their performance.

"We managed to collect a lot of data from our test with all the teams in Jerez and we've been very busy evaluating it to see what we can learn," said Hembery.

"What's interesting is that the emphasis during testing is changing: as the teams get up to speed with their new cars the work has become much more focussed, with some longer runs and potential race set-ups being evaluated. We've also got some evolutions of the supersoft and soft tyres, which was always part of our development schedule."

The Barcelona test will be the last time that teams will get a chance to evaluate all four tyre compounds, as for the final Bahrain test the only choices will be the hard and the soft that will be used for the race itself.

Hembery expects the challenges of Barcelona will help teams formulate better their tyre strategies for the season ahead.

"Barcelona is a track that both ourselves and all the teams are very familiar with, so I'm sure we will come back with plenty of information once more," he explained.

"Once more, the track characteristics are quite different to the two circuits that we have tested at before, which enables the teams to experience the behaviour of our tyres under a wide range of circumstances: something that will be crucial to formulating race strategies as the year goes on."