Pirelli to investigate Vettel failure with Ferrari

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Pirelli will work with Ferrari to investigate the spectacular tyre failure suffered by Sebastian Vettel during the Austrian Grand Prix.

Vettel was leading the race having yet to make his first pit stop when his right rear tyre failed at high speed on the pit straight. Vettel had just completed his 26th lap on supersoft tyres when the incident occurred, with only Romain Grosjean going further before pitting on the supersoft tyres.

Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery was keen not to jump to conclusions immediately following the race, saying the failure would be investigated by both the team and the tyre manufacturer.

“It’s what we do in every situation at every race,” Hembery told F1i. “We work with the team in question to get all the data together and analyse the situation. That’s something we’ll do [on Monday].”

Reflecting on the race as a whole, Hembery was pleased to see a number of strategies employed with no clearly quickest route to the end.

“[Strategy was] maybe not so obvious. The rain didn’t come which everyone thought was going to be coming, but it played out right the way through to the end. All three compounds were used in the race again which has been a feature of the last few races.”

With Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton colliding on the final lap after Hamilton closed down his team-mate on soft tyres, Hembery admitted he felt Rosberg was set to be better off in the final stint having fitted supersofts for the closing 16 laps.

“Probably at the time you still felt Nico was in a good position because Nico did a very strong first part of his stint after his first change. He managed to get in front and probably felt at that point he was in a winning situation unless Lewis did an extra long stint trying to one-stop. But he came in as well and then there was a bit of fun at the end.”

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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.