Drivers including Sebastian Vettel and Felipe Massa expressed their need for Pirelli tyres to be made safer and more resistant to track debris following the tyre failures experienced over the Belgian Grand Prix race weekend.
Pirelli concluded their extensive investigation into the tyres that failed on Vettel and Nico Rosberg’s cars as well as the other Formula 1 rubber allocated to teams over the weekend and found a large number of cuts on them.
The Italian manufacturer then proceeded to blame Spa’s track conditions for the tyre problems in reference to a low total number found on more abrasive tracks raced on earlier in the year and asked for “a study to evaluate the way in which circuits can be cleaned most effectively”.
Although acknowledging Pirelli’s response to the issues suffered by drivers as “very professional” and hopes for them to make improvements on the tyres, Vettel still voiced his unhappiness in the random manner in which he suffered his tyre failure.
“I think it is not acceptable to have a blow-up at that sort of speeds out of the blue, I think that’s what I said also after the race,” the Ferrari driver commented during the press conference.
“So there’s nothing really to add.”
“But as I said before I think the investigations that have been going on, the stuff that obviously got analysed and talked about explains some of it, maybe not all of it yet, but it’s still ongoing.”
“Obviously as I said the most important thing is that we make sure that we make progress. At the moment from the Pirelli side it looks very, very professional, they handle it with extreme care so I think things are going to right way.”
Daniel Ricciardo admitted that he “experienced some blistering” on his tyres during the race at Spa, however, said that tyre problems are “pretty common around there”.
Although Felipe Massa said when speaking on tyre problems being down to debris: “I don’t think it should be common,” “Debris we have every race. Some races we have even more debris than others.”
He added that the tyres must be able to handle debris on a track.
“So for sure the tyres need to be strong enough to accept the debris or what we have inside the track. I don’t think it’s common. And we had cut as well during the weekend.”
