Ferrari wants to do tyre test as well: Domenicali

The row over the tyre test erupted on Sunday and is refusing to simmer down. The furore was created when Mercedes did a tyre test with Pirelli without consent from other teams. A letter, which was leaked earlier, corroborated the other teams’s stance regarding Mercedes’s transgression of the rules.

A negative campaign has been building up against Mercedes since then, with Red Bull and Ferrari leading the protest.

The matter has been addresses to the FIA, who is likely to take it up with International Tribunal.

Stefano Domenicali, team principal of Ferrari, has cried foul and voiced his suspicion. He has candidly remarked that the main reason for Ferrari’s protest against Mercedes’s tyre test with Pirelli is because the team wants to do the test itself. Domenicali points out that Mercedes had proceeded confidently with the testing, which means that there is a loophole to be exploited, and he wants Ferrari to be able to do the same.

“Just to make the story very short we lodged a protest because it’s basically the only way to understand the clarification of the regulation where you have a doubt,” Domenicali said. “For us it was not in doubt that it was the 2013 car and – as written in the regulation 22.1 – it’s not possible to use the previous two year’s cars during the season for any kind of activity.”

“Therefore that was our opinion and we just want to know if this is possible. If this is possible we will be the first to raise our arms to make sure we can do the same because as you know Ferrari has always been very pushy to try to do in-season testing on the track and this is the reason why we wanted to understand the situation, no more than that,” he added.

The rule in question that Domenicali is hinting to is 22.1 in the 2013 Sporting Regulations which states: ‘Track testing shall be considered any track running time not part of an Event undertaken by a competitor entered in the Championship, using cars which conform substantially with the current Formula One Technical Regulations in addition to those from the previous or subsequent year. The only exception is that each competitor is permitted up to eight promotional events, carried out using tyres provided specifically for this purpose by the appointed supplier, to a maximum distance of 100kms per event.’