Pirelli sets conditions for new F1 deal

The FIA has opened the tyre tender process for 2017-19, and Pirelli chairman and chief executive Marco Tronchetti Provera said his firm would be happy to continue either as sole supplier, or if the sport opts to reintroduce competition

"We intend to stay if the regulations are the ones we agree upon, if the costs are affordable, and the guarantee we want to have in the contracts is accepted," he said in Monaco.

"We want tests that will be done properly in order to have the best product available, and then we are ready to help create more emotions, but only with the highest level of safety.

"More testing would be better for all of us, for the teams, and with warmer testing in somewhere like Bahrain or Abu Dhabi.

"If we wait until February it's too late and the temperatures are not the right ones. It's in the interests of Formula 1 and all the teams to do that."

Tronchetti Provera said the Strategy Group's proposal that teams get free choice from the four tyre compounds at each grand prix - rather than Pirelli selecting two itself - from 2016 was unacceptable.

"That absolutely must not happen," said Tronchetti Provera.

"We have to provide a guarantee of the products. The responsibility to choose has to remain in our hands because we don't want our tyres to be used improperly.

"We can find a way to provide safe tyres, giving also some flexibility. But the basic choice of the tyres has to be made by us."

With the sport also poised to embrace the prospect of 18-inch rims at some point in the future, the 67-year-old said: "We showed the 18 inches on a GP2 car around this circuit yesterday (pictured above).

"We are ready to go to 20 inches, we don't care about it. The technology inside the tyre is based on materials and structure, and the structure can be 13, 15, 18. It doesn't matter."

Rival Michelin has stated its intention to also make a bid for the tyre-supply deal, albeit demanding F1 revert to 18-inch rims and make longer-lasting rubber.

Again, Tronchetti Privera has no issues, although believes the current product of tyres that degrade is far more difficult to achieve than making hard-wearing rubber.

"In terms of competition I am neutral," he said.

"But we are ready to accept it; we are also ready to be sole supplier. We will let the FIA make the decision.

"As for less management of the tyres in races, we are ready to do that. It's not an issue.

"The easiest thing is to make a tyre that last 10 races, a season. Technologically speaking that's the easiest solution.

"What is difficult is to do as we do today, providing different tyres that last safely for 10, 15, 30 laps. That is a good challenge."