Ferrari downplays Pirelli test

Ferrari has moved to downplay the relevance of the tyre test it carried out on behalf of Pirelli earlier this season.

Following the revelation that Mercedes had carried out a three-day test with the tyre supplier in Barcelona following the Spanish Grand Prix, it emerged that another team had also taken part in a test earlier in the year.

However, while the main issue surrounding the Mercedes test is that it was carried out using the team's 2013 car, the earlier test - involving Ferrari - took place using a 2011-spec machine.

That test was also not carried out by Ferrari's race team, but by Corse Clienti, the division of the Italian manufacturer that runs cars for private individuals over the course of the year.

As such, the Ferrari test wasn't in breach of any of F1's current testing regulations, with the Italian team quick to point out it had done nothing wrong.

"For a bit more of a year there has been a possibility of performing these so-called 1,000 kms tests that Pirelli does for its own tyre development," a team spokesman told SPEED.com. "For Ferrari it has always been very clear that these tests could not make use of a 2013 car. In terms of running an old car, the matter is quite irrelevant, because it is totally within the rules.

"This is something that we have never denied; this was very transparent. All the teams have this possibility. The tyres, the specification of the test, is something that Pirelli knows; not us."

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali had insisted in Monaco that the team's issue with the Mercedes test wasn't that it had taken place, but that the current car had been used.