Sports

Pirelli launches probe to get to bottom of Grand Prix tyre failures

Sports Desk, Aug 3 (efe-epa).- Pirelli has launched an investigation into the tyre failures suffered by Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz Jr during the British Grand Prix, Formula 1’s tyre supplier told reporters.

Hamilton and Bottas (Mercedes) and Sainz (McLaren) all suffered from punctures in the last lap of the Sunday Silverstone race.

Bottas and Sainz were rolling second and fourth at the time of their blowout.

Hamilton managed to get his car to the finish line with only three functioning wheels and celebrated his third win of the season and seventh at the Silverstone circuit.

Despite racers due to return to the iconic track next weekend for the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix, the focus now is on the multiple punctures.

“We will obviously investigate what happened in the last few laps,” Pirelli’s head of motor sport Mario Isola said.

“It’s a bit early now to give you any conclusion.”

Pirelli hopes to clarify what happened to the wear of the tires by Tuesday.

“It could be high wear, because for sure tyres with 38 laps or more on this circuit are quite worn, but I’m not saying that the wear is the cause of the issue,” Isola added.

He added that the use of the safety car on lap 13 of 52 forced teams to bring forward their first stop, meaning that during the second round the use of tires was lengthened.

Our forecast was for the teams to stop around lap 18, Isola said.

“It can be debris because we had the pieces of the front wing of Kimi (Raikkonen) that were on track, but also some other debris. So that’s why we want to investigate not only the tyres with a failure but all the tyres used in the last few laps of the race, to understand if we find any other cut or any other possible indication on what happened.

“We don’t want to exclude anything, we want to analyse everything 360 degrees and avoid excluding any possibility because it’s a big mistake when you make these kinds of investigations. We have to consider all the possibilities,” the Pirelli chief added.

For next weekend’s Grand Prix, Pirelli plans to use softer tyre compounds. EFE-EPA

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