Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Rosberg wants change after 'not acceptable' tyre failures

Nico Rosberg says change is needed ahead of the Italian Grand Prix following two tyre failures at Spa-Francorchamps.

During Friday practice, Rosberg suffered a spectacular high-speed right rear failure as he approached Blanchimont, sliding sideways off track but fortunately avoiding contact with the barriers. Sebastian Vettel then suffered a failure of the same tyre on the penultimate lap of yesterday's race, with his incident occurring just after Eau Rouge.

While Pirelli insists the two failures were completely different - blaming an external source for Rosberg's and saying Vettel's was due to the life of the tyre - Rosberg has called for change.

"Vettel blowing up his tyre, that's really not acceptable," Rosberg said. "For either of us - for me on Friday or for him [on Sunday] - if that would have happened a couple of metres earlier or later we would have had huge shunts, I mean the biggest shunts ever because this track is so fast.

"The next track is Monza, the fastest track of the year, so they have to think of something to try and improve that situation.

"For example, activating all the rear view cameras so if the teams are watching that they can see before a tyre explodes or something and give us warning, or something like that."

Vettel livid at 'bullshit' from Pirelli after failure

Click here for Sunday's gallery of the Belgian Grand Prix 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.