Pirelli has declined to speculate too much on the causes of today’s failures at Silverstone – but the company insists that the change in its bonding process was not responsible.
The change, introduced at Silverstone, was designed to stop the delaminations seen earlier in the year. In those cases drivers were able to continue as the tyres remained inflated, but at Silverstone there was a series of catastrophic failures affecting Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Jean-Eric Vergne and Sergio Perez.
Several drivers also made pit stops with tyres that had issues or were on the verge of failing, including Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg and Fernando Alonso.
Pirelli has been asked to join the FIA and team managers at the previously scheduled Sporting Committee meeting, to be held at the Nurburgring on Wednesday afternoon.
“There have obviously been some issues with rear-left tyre failures which we have not seen before,” said Paul Hembery. “We are taking the situation very seriously and we are currently investigating all tyres to determine the cause as soon as possible, ahead of the next Grand Prix in Germany. At the moment, we can’t really say much more until we have fully investigated and analysed all of these incidents, which is our top priority.
“However, we can exclude that the new bonding process, which we introduced at this race, is at cause for the tyre failures we have seen today. There might be some aspect to this circuit that impacts specifically on the latest version of our 2013 specification tyres but at this point we do not want to speculate but will now put together all the evidence to find out what happened and then take appropriate next steps should these be required.”
Adam Cooper's F1 Blog 
I don’t see how there is much that can be done by Friday. Surely it isn’t possible to change the tyre spec & manufacture in sufficient quantities by then. The only practical steps I can imagine being taken are specifying that teams must use a higher minimum tyre pressure and the FIA modifying any sharp edged curbs at the track. And before criticising Pirelli teams should remember that they have been trying to get agreement to change the tyres for the last couple of races but not getting cooperation from all teams.
Yes, I’d love to see Pirelli go on a major PR offensive! I think they’re entitled to do so, while most of their ire should be directed at the ineffectual leadership at the FIA. I get the feeling “safer” tires would have been steamrolled through under previous leaders.
That being said… I was kind of expecting a trackside report from T4, Adam… Seems like your kind of investigative journalism!?
And Pirelli get into all sorts of trouble when they when they try to test the current tyres on current cars. Pirelli really must be asking themselves “what have we gotten ourselves into” F1 asked them to construct an aggressive tyre with a degradation cliff, and to supply a hard and soft compound for each race. They have to do all this AND with no real in season testing.
Weren’t Pirelli about to go from a radial rear tyre to a Kevlar based one before the teams all cried foul after the Mercedes test? F1 has put Pirelli into an impossible position.
This is a bigger fiasco than the 2005 USGP, and I do not think that the blame can be laid upon Pirelli. They’ve been asked to produce a product without adequate means to do so, and when they proposed a safer tyre some of the teams refused on the basis of lost performance. The drivers are very fortunate that none of them were struck by a large piece of tyre carcass flying through the air, this was also a hazard for the marshals. Regulations and avarice did this, not incompetence.
Adam I’ve read elsewhere that some teams were gaining an advantage by swapping left and right rear tyres. Where any of the tyre failures today on cars with swapped directions? What else could be different about this track than others that would put stress on only the left rear?
“What else could be different about this track than others that would put stress on only the left rear?”
In the commentary Brundle suggested that the track temperature was higher than expected. Although races like Malaysia have high temps to….I don’t know.
Let them perform testing, how will they ever know how the product stands out on a track!