Pirelli reveals teams, dates for 2019 tyre testing

In addition, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren will also undertake some wet-weather running for the Italian company, split between Fiorano and Paul Ricard, which has a sprinkler system.

The schedule includes sessions that take place on the Tuesday/Wednesday immediately after the Chinese, Spanish, British, Japanese and Mexican GPs.

Brazil, which featured last year but was cancelled for security reasons after McLaren team members were targeted by robbers, has been dropped.

“We’ve defined the calendar with all the teams,” said Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola. “It is good that we have been able to distribute one dry session to each team.

"We offered to test to all the teams, and all the teams replied in a positive way.

"Talking about wet tyres, we have less sessions, we have three teams who were also available to test on wets, and we allocated wet tests to these three teams.”

The usual tyre testing format applies, meaning the teams will run “blind", with no knowledge of what they are running, and no opportunity to test their own development parts.

Pirelli also prefers that teams use their race drivers, or experienced testers, if possible.

Full testing schedule

Date	Tyre	Track	Teams
April 17-18	Slick	Shanghai*	Force India
April 19-20	Wet	Fiorano	Ferrari
May 15-16	Slick	Barcelona	McLaren Haas
May 30-31	Wet	Paul Ricard	Mercedes
June 14-15	Slick	Vallelunga	Toro Rosso
July 10-11	Slick	Silverstone	Red Bull Williams
September 5-6	Wet	Paul Ricard	McLaren
September 20-21	Slick	Paul Ricard	Mercedes Ferrari
October 9-10	Slick	Suzuka	Renault
October 30	Slick	Mexico City	Sauber

* To be confirmed