In addition, Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren will also undertake some wet-weather running for the Italian company, split between Fiorano and Paul Ricard, which has a sprinkler system.

The schedule includes sessions that take place on the Tuesday/Wednesday immediately after the Chinese, Spanish, British, Japanese and Mexican GPs.

Brazil, which featured last year but was cancelled for security reasons after McLaren team members were targeted by robbers, has been dropped.

“We’ve defined the calendar with all the teams,” said Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola. “It is good that we have been able to distribute one dry session to each team.

"We offered to test to all the teams, and all the teams replied in a positive way.

"Talking about wet tyres, we have less sessions, we have three teams who were also available to test on wets, and we allocated wet tests to these three teams.”

The usual tyre testing format applies, meaning the teams will run “blind", with no knowledge of what they are running, and no opportunity to test their own development parts.

Pirelli also prefers that teams use their race drivers, or experienced testers, if possible.

Full testing schedule

Date Tyre Track Teams April 17-18 Slick Shanghai* Force India April 19-20 Wet Fiorano Ferrari May 15-16 Slick Barcelona McLaren Haas May 30-31 Wet Paul Ricard Mercedes June 14-15 Slick Vallelunga Toro Rosso July 10-11 Slick Silverstone Red Bull Williams September 5-6 Wet Paul Ricard McLaren September 20-21 Slick Paul Ricard Mercedes Ferrari October 9-10 Slick Suzuka Renault October 30 Slick Mexico City Sauber

* To be confirmed