Pirelli to consider 'all possibilities' in tyre failure investigation

Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola says the tyre supplier will conduct a "360 degree" investigation into the tyre failures that marred the end of Sunday's British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Mercedes was on track for 1-2 finish when Valtteri Bottas suddenly had to contend with a delaminated left front tyre in the race's closing laps.

The incident was followed by similar front-left tyre failures that befell race leader Lewis Hamilton and McLaren's Carlos Sainz.

Hamilton managed to nurse his car home to achieve his 87th career win while Bottas and Sainz were pushed down the order and out of the points.

All three incidents involved Pirelli's hard tyre and came at the end of long stints on the compound as a result of the majority of the field pitting for fresh rubber during the race's second safety car period sparked by Daniil Kvyat's accident.

• Bottas: Tyres will be 'an issue for everyone' for Silverstone 2

While excessive tyre wear may have a factor, Isola wouldn’t dismiss the presence of debris on the track as a potential cause for the successive failures.

"We will obviously investigate what happened in the last few laps," said Isola.

"It's a bit early now to give you any conclusion. 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.

"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.

"What we can do is to analyse the tyres from the race to understand if there is anything in the construction that was subject to excessive stress, or whatever, but this is one of the investigations."

Isola alluded to a tyre wear issue that could have made the rubber more vulnerable to debris.
"What is clear is that when you have a tyre that is completely worn the protection of the tread on the construction is less," said the Italian engineer.

"So if there is any debris, any small piece of carbon on track, it is easier to damage the tyre, because you don't have any rubber on the tyre that is protecting the cord, and some cords are visible on the tyres.

"So that's why I'm saying that the level of wear is close to 100%."

With F1's second race at Silverstone just days away, Isola said that Pirelli would lose no time conducting its investigation.

"We have the possibility to do some analysis in our laboratory here on track," he said.

"It is clear that we don't have a lot of time to carry on with the investigation, because we have another race in less than one week.

"So, we have to come to a conclusion as soon as possible. The target is to have something more fully by tomorrow, or Tuesday at the latest. So that is the plan.

"If there is the need to run any tests that are not possible to run here on track we will send the van quickly to Milan where we have our facilities, laboratories, indoor testing, with obviously more possibilities, more testing we can do there.

"But I'm confident that we can have some good indication from the laboratories that we have here on track."

Pirelli will supply a selection of softer compounds for next week's 70th Anniversary Grand Prix. But Isola said it was too early to decide whether that plan should be changed.

"There are a number of question marks at the moment and depending on which is the cause of the issue, we have to react appropriately," he commented.

"But the reaction can be different if we are talking about the wear, for example, it doesn't matter if we go with the same compounds we use today, or the softer compounds, each tyre has a maximum number of laps that depends on each car. Each car is different."

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