Pirelli set to stick with current hard

The Italian tyre manufacturer gave each team two sets of a new version of its hard compound for evaluation in Friday practice at Sepang, but it did not produce the improvement that had been hoped for.

Pirelli's director of motorsport Paul Hembery told AUTOSPORT that there appeared to be no reason to revise its current compound choice based on the results of Friday running at Sepang.

"We tried a new hard compound with mixed results, in the sense that we had very little running on it," he said. "We didn't run it in the afternoon, as nobody wanted to run it because they were working on race strategy. We found warm-up was slower and more stable.

"We didn't expect the warm-up to be quite so slow, particularly with this temperature and this kind of circuit, but it has given us some valuable testing information that I am certainly confident will assist us in future development.

"I think the problem we have had is not being able to go testing with the teams, so when you test in a real race environment with the teams it gives you valuable feedback and information."

When asked what the plan now was for compound choice for Turkey, Hembery said: "I would think, based on what we have seen in Malaysia, we will go forward with the current hard.

"If I found any dramas here then I might have changed my mind. But our worry is actually being too conservative. We have a number of steps after this version of the hard, taking us right the way through to something that would do a full race distance with minimal degradation."