And that's because the most common fears raised by the F1 drivers after two days of action on the Ricardo Tormo circuit were related to tire wear.
Fernando Alonso was the first one to speak out at the end of the Tuesday action, when he pointed fingers at the increased level of tire wear for the new Pirelli rubber and the small amount of tire sets available for the Valencia test. Under the circumstances, he insisted teams are not able to run all the necessary setups.
“It was not easy to keep the tyres consistent. We see some drop in the tyres when they are new. The first lap is good and then you lose two or three seconds a lap. Then you are more or less consistent but obviously too slow,” he said after the Wednesday running, according to Autosport.
Mercedes GP's Nico Rosberg echoed the comments of Alonso, but revealed that tire degradation could only make races more spectacular in 2011. So there's no need to worry, as this issue could be tackled by each driver through racing technique.
“It will make the racing more exciting,” argued Rosberg. “The important thing is that we then have a good car because if you have a good car you can make the best of such degradation on the tire.”
The same thoughts were shared with the media by Hamilton, who admitted that it's better to have tires that wear out faster and lead to multiple pit stops during a race than repeating the situation from last year, when almost all races were ran on a one-pit stop basis.
“Obviously last year we had one pitstop and now the degradation is massive on these tires and it might be for some people that they have to do two or three pit stops – which I think is quite good. I'm hoping that we have to do more this year, because it adds more excitement,” said the McLaren driver, who is yet to test the new tires with his 2011-spec Mercedes MP4-26.
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