Mercedes’ Paddy Lowe says he has “never seen anything like” Nico Rosberg’s tyre failure during FP2 at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Rosberg was approaching Blanchimont on a long run when his right rear tyre spectacularly failed at high speed, with the Mercedes fortunately coming to rest in the run-off area without making contact with the barriers. Onboard replays showed something working loose on the inside of the tyre as far back as Les Combes at the end of the first sector, and executive director (technical) Lowe told Sky Sports it will be the focus of any investigations.
”There are different bits of video showing some sort of unravelling up to a minute before the actual catastrophic failure,” Lowe said. “So I think the big question will be what’s initiated that?”
Asked what could have initiated it, Lowe replied: “I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like that before.
“So we simply don’t know. Pirelli will obviously take the tyre away and analyse it but we’ll make some thorough checks to make sure the car wasn’t a contributor to it in some way.
“[Never seen a failure] in a way where it starts to unravel … normally these failures seem to build up much more quickly.”
Tyre failure was 'quite a shock' - Rosberg
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