Mercedes Tiregate

Well, most of us have had heard of this incident, but I'll recap it anyway. Mercedes AMG Pertonas performed a "private" tire test with Mercedes in Barcelona. A few good points were made on-air that I would like to recap for you faithful reader. The first, sort of neutral point is that it should be allowed and nothing was wrong, because how is Pirelli supposed to produce the best tires if they cannot test them on up-to-date machinery? Also the tires were not even the ones being used or going to be used on top of the fact that Pirelli dictated most of the variables when they were running. It makes no sense to test it on an outdated, often slow car like an HRT (no offense to them, it was truly slow). 

Then there's the argument for either side. The argument Pirelli is making is that it states in their contract that they can test their tires when they wish. Then, there's the FIA rules, which state that running a car not part of a race weekend is illegal unless it is a car that is two years out of date. However, there is no curent concord agreement that the teams have signed, so there's actually a question of whether the rules have any bearing. 

What do I think? Well, I think they shouldn't have mauled the tires in the first place. But, if I was forced to comment on it, I personally think it's fine, there is way too little testing currently, so if Pirelli were to do a test with every team, it would make sense.