Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Lowe has ‘never seen’ tyre failure like Rosberg’s

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

Click here for a gallery of the biggest crashes at Spa-Francorchamps

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.