Pirelli vows to stay neutral amid Ferrari's concerns over hard tyre

Ferrari's recent upgrades have lifted the team into a position where it appears to be Red Bull Racing's current main rival - and Fernando Alonso was able to finish between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in Valencia.

However, with the team having struggled for pace earlier this year on Pirelli's hard compound tyre, Ferrari is openly worried about its prospects for Silverstone if that tyre is one of the choices for the British track.

A final decision on the matter will be made by Tuesday morning at the earliest and, although Pirelli is aware of how important its selection could be, the Italian tyre manufacturer says its priority is in bringing the tyre that is best for everybody - not just one team.

Pirelli's director of motorsport Paul Hembery told AUTOSPORT: "It is a big challenge for us because we want to make sure that we have good racing. Equally, we don't want too many pitstops. Silverstone could be very hot - and if it is hot, fast and aggressive that for us is a big call.

"If it is cold you don't want to have compounds too hard, which then start sliding and graining. It is something we are analysing. So we will look at the data from Valencia and we need to make a decision by Monday night, or at the latest Tuesday morning."

Hembery was under no illusion how significant Pirelli's decision could be on the competitive order for Silverstone - but said it would be wrong for a decision to be based on helping out individual competitors.

"The teams have a difference of opinion," he said. "We have asked their advice but clearly we don't want to favour or penalise one over the other. We have to take a look at the whole field.

"We have 12 teams we look at and feel that we are going to make the right choice for them, and also the right choice for us of course.

"Our main concern is to make sure that we don't penalise any team. Some people have decided that from Barcelona the hard tyre favours those with high downforce, so we have to be careful that the strategy based on hard tyres is not going to penalise any particular team. Equally we don't want to be in the situation where we have five pitstops, so it is a balance we have to find."

He added: "You have to think what is right for us - and what is right for us is that we don't want more than four pitstops. We would prefer to have three, but probably Silverstone whatever we do we will probably have four, whatever option we do. As long as we don't have five, that is fundamental for us.

"If it is three or four then it is mixture of how we balance all the requirements of the teams. We will do a table, we will analyse all the teams' requirements, and we will base it on what is the best for the majority of the teams."