03/08/2020
NEWS STORY
At the best of times, the three high-profile failures during the British Grand Prix would be worrying, but with the teams lining up at Silverstone again next week, and with Pirelli due to issue them tyres a step softer, the heat is on to discover what exactly went wrong.
What is known is that almost all the drivers pitted earlier than originally planned, taking advantage of the red flag period following Daniil Kvyat's crash on lap 11.
While most point to the fact that as a result drivers were using the mediums close to their recommended 40 lap limit, Pirelli boss, Mario Isola hasn't ruled out debris being the cause, citing the debris that followed Kimi Raikkonen's front wing failure.
Nonetheless, the Italian manufacturer is launching a full investigation.
"We will obviously investigate what happened in the last few laps," said the Italian. "It's a bit early now to give you any conclusion.
"It could be high wear," he admitted, "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," he continued, "because we had the pieces of the front wing of Kimi 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 was also keen to make clear that throughout the race the tyres were being pushed to their limit.
"The level of wear is quite high, this is a factor, looking at the tyre from Grosjean's first stint, it was completely worn, and I had a look at some tyres coming also from the second stint, and the level of wear is close to 100%. We have to understand If this is the cause of the failures or not.
"What is clear is that when you have a tyre that is completely worn the protection of the tread on the construction is less. 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%."
Looking ahead to next week, he said it is too early to contemplate a change of heart in terms of the compounds on offer.
"There are a number of question marks at the moment," he admitted, "and depending on which is the cause of the issue, we have to react appropriately. 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.
"We have the possibility to do some analysis in our laboratory here on track," he said of the investigation. "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. 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."
Check out our Race Day gallery from Silverstone, here.