Pirelli keeps tyre pressures despite driver complaints

Pirelli has not lowered tyre pressures for the Belgian Grand Prix weekend despite a number of complaints from drivers.

Felipe Massa called the high pressures - which are 23.5 psi front and 22 psi rear - "a bit of a joke", while Lewis Hamilton added "I don’t have anything good to say about the tyres" as the field struggled with a lack of rear grip and high degradation.

Carlos Sainz revealed the drivers brought up the issue of tyre pressures in Friday's driver briefing, saying he found "massive chunks" were coming off the tyres, and voicing concerns about the supersoft degradation which "becomes like driving on an extreme wet on a dry track, like very, very, very slippery and not very comfortable".

Pirelli insisted on Friday evening it would not react to the driver comments but follow its normal procedures to analyse data following the first two practice sessions, and on Saturday morning the tyre manufacturer confirmed the minimum tyre pressures will remain at the same level for the rest of the weekend.

One area there has been a slight tweak is with the tyre cambers, with Pirelli reducing the camber from -3.50 to -3.25 degrees following its analysis of Friday's data.

Teams have been struggling as a result of high temperatures at Spa-Francorchamps, with Saturday again seeing temperatures in excess of 30C before the start of FP3 at 1100 local time.

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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.