Piastri and Lawson Heat Up Mugello for Pirelli's 2027 Tyre Development

Oscar Piastri and Liam Lawson spent Wednesday turning Mugello into a furnace for Pirelli’s future, pounding around the Tuscan circuit as the tyre supplier pushed ahead with its 2027 development plans.

This was no headline-chasing test. No glory runs, no qualifying simulations. Just two young drivers, three of the hardest compounds in Pirelli’s range, and a track hot enough to cook a set of C1s on the pit wall.

Piastri grinds through McLaren programme

Piastri shouldered McLaren’s workload on day one, logging 93 laps and 488 kilometres as the team cycled through the C1, C2 and C3 tyres. His best effort, a 1m21.358s, came amid a methodical programme that built towards a pair of 14-lap runs after earlier shorter stints.

The Australian’s day had the feel of a classic test driver shift: disciplined, incremental, no drama. Mugello’s sweeping, high-load corners make it a brutal place to stress the hardest compounds, and with track temperatures peaking at 55 degrees Celsius, every lap fed Pirelli’s data banks with exactly the kind of punishment it wanted.

This wasn’t about McLaren chasing set-up breakthroughs or Piastri chasing lap charts. It was about understanding how the toughest tyres behave when the tarmac turns into a griddle.

Lawson racks up the mileage for Red Bull

On the other side of the pit lane, Lawson simply out-lasted everyone. The New Zealander completed 116 laps and 608 kilometres for Red Bull, concentrating almost exclusively on the C2 compound.

His day began with repeated eight-lap runs, a rhythm of out, push, return, reset. As the afternoon wore on and the evaluation deepened, those stints stretched longer, giving Pirelli a broader window on degradation and consistency as the heat refused to relent.

Lawson’s quickest lap, a 1m22.297s, sat well adrift of Piastri’s benchmark, but raw pace was never the point. The brief was clear: feed Pirelli comparative data, not the social media highlight reels.

Even so, there was a certain symmetry to seeing Lawson back in a Red Bull just days after his latest call-up to the senior team at Zandvoort. Drafted in at short notice when Isack Hadjar was sidelined with a wrist injury, Lawson qualified eighth and finished seventh at the Dutch Grand Prix, scoring his first points as a Red Bull race driver after a short two-race spell with the team at the start of 2025.

From late stand-in on Sunday to tyre mule on Wednesday; different job, same impression of quiet efficiency.

Heat, hard tyres and what comes next

The conditions did as much to shape the test as the run plans. With track temperatures soaring to 55°C, Mugello offered Pirelli an ideal – and unforgiving – laboratory for its hardest compounds. Long, loaded corners, relentless lateral forces, no hiding place for a carcass under strain.

This is the kind of environment that will inform what Formula 1’s rubber looks like in 2027, even if the lap times themselves slide quickly into the background.

Red Bull, meanwhile, still has a more immediate decision to make. The team hopes Hadjar will be fit to return for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza next weekend, but there is no confirmation yet. If the Frenchman fails to recover in time, Lawson’s mid-season audition may yet extend by another race.

Day two at Mugello will shuffle the deck again. Lando Norris takes over from Piastri for McLaren, while Ayumu Iwasa steps in for Lawson at Red Bull. Audi joins the action as well, with Nico Hulkenberg set to drive as the manufacturer continues to lay foundations for its future.

Tyres for 2027, drivers fighting for 2025 and beyond, and a searing Tuscan circuit tying it all together. The numbers from this test won’t decide a championship – but they might help shape what kind of Formula 1 that championship is fought in.