On the Saturday night of the Monaco Grand Prix it emerged that Mercedes had run a 1000km test directly after the Spanish Grand Prix with their 2013 car and regular drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.
It was asked by Pirelli to test some new compounds for 2014 as well as a development for Canada this year. Mercedes didn't have any knowledge of which compound they were running (although I'm sure they've got enough intelligent people to make an educated guess) and did not run any developments on their car.
They say it was simply a tyre test to help Pirelli, but when a team like Mercedes who have had such obvious tyre issues before perform such a test it's always going to raise issues. In testing you're always learning something.
Mercedes said that it was FIA approved, so despite Ferrari and Red Bull launching an official protest saying that it contravened the regulations governing in season testing (of which none is allowed apart from a few days straight line testing and a 3 day young driver test) there seemed to be no threat to the team.
However, the FIA has now said that they actually wrote to Pirelli and Mercedes to approve the test but make sure that the opportunity was open to all teams and the test would be run by Pirelli and not the team itself. It appears from the fact no one knew about it until Monaco that this was not done.
Red Bull boss Christian Horner and Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali have both entered protests, believing Mercedes were underhand in the way they have dealt with this situation.
Domenicali pointed out that under the current regulations no team can test their 2013 car or the previous two years models and if Pirelli required a car all teams should have been notified.
For their part Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery said that they have run a test with a different team before and have asked others.
The Monaco stewards are currently compiling a report to be sent to the FIA. How this situation will be dealt with is not yet known. Mercedes did sort of have approval, yet the fact other teams weren't notified makes it seem slightly devious. Obviously there is more information to be revealed but after such an impressive result for the Silver Arrows squad in Monaco, this is rather beginning to overshadow their achievement.
What is known is that the Monaco race result is not in dispute and most of the Formula 1 fraternity believe that the race was not affected by the test.
photo taken from autosport.com
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