Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel livid at 'bullshit' from Pirelli after failure

An angry Sebastian Vettel blasted Pirelli for giving "bullshit" reasons for tyre failures after his Belgian Grand Prix was ended by a blowout.

Vettel was attempting to complete a one-stop race and running on the medium tyre when his right rear exploded on the penultimate lap just after Eau Rouge. Nico Rosberg suffered a similar failure in Friday practice approaching Blanchimont, but Pirelli said there was no structural integrity issue with its tyres.

Having insisted he was not too greedy trying to go so long on one set of tyres, Vettel said the failure is unacceptable and change is needed.

"Well how many laps was I missing? Not many," Vettel told the BBC. "Things like that are not allowed to happen – full stop. If it happens 200 metres earlier I’m not standing here now, I’m with 300 [kph] stuck in Eau Rouge, so I don’t know what else needs to happen."

Having said he stated his concerns to race director Charlie Whiting in the drivers' briefing, asked if he felt they were taken seriously, Vettel replied: "Well, I think it was – but what’s the answer?

"Same as every time: ‘yeah there was a cut, debris, bodywork, the driver went wide’ – bullshit. If Nico tells us that he didn’t go off the track then he didn’t go off the track, same with me I didn’t go out of the track, just out of the blue it explodes and as I said, if this happens earlier – f**k."

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.