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Nico Rosberg logged his second win of 2013 after a superb performance for Mercedes at Silverstone.

However, it was only confirmed after he escaped with a reprimand from the FIA stewards for not making a “significant reduction in speed” under double waved yellow flags.

Frustrated rivals pointed out that the German had logged a purple sector – the fastest of the race to date – when the flags were shown.

Nevertheless it was a canny drive by Rosberg, who ran third early on and benefited from Lewis Hamilton’s tyre failure and Sebastian Vettel’s gearbox breakage – but also had to be there to take advantage.

Jenson Button has emphasised how frustrated the drivers are about the Pirelli tyre failures at Silverstone – and especially the fact that the problem was not addressed after issues in earlier races.

“If it happens in a low-speed corner it’s bad enough, but it’s happening at 300km\h on the back straight,” said the former World Champion. “It’s very scary. It’s not just scary for the person that is driving the car, it’s very scary for the people driving behind, because the whole tread is coming off the tyre. If that hits you in the head, I don’t know what will happen.

“Something has to be done, and something was supposed to be done two races ago. That was the reason for the change of tyre construction, safety, nothing else.”

Asked what he could do in his GPDA role Button said that it wasn’t up to the drivers to act.

“I shouldn’t need to do anything. It is obvious, the situation, it has been for a few races. We were lucky at the last race, we didn’t have any. We’ve had five here in total, including Checo’s yesterday. There are tyres there, I don’t know how reliable they are, but they’ve been tested, we all know that. So hopefully it will be changed for the next race. But it’s only next weekend.”

Meanwhile Button endured another tough afternoon at his home race, eventually finishing out of the points in 13^th.

“It wasn’t too bad, up until the last safety car we were sixth or seventh or something. I think we’d lucked in a little bit, because cars had pitted. But in that last stint because the tyres were old there wasn’t a lot of tread on them, so getting them up to temperature was impossible, especially for us, we struggle with that anyway.

“I was a sitting duck, really. All the cars were on new tyres, fighting past, and the problem is as soon as you’re off line, that’s it, your tyres are dirty, and it’s even more difficult to get temperature.”

Christian Horner and Stefano Domenicali have both suggested – completely independently – that at least part of the Young Driver Test at Silverstone later this month should be devoted to working with Pirelli and current race drivers.

The test is enshrined in Sporting Regulations as being for rookies, but given the FIA’s desire to resolve the issue, that could be addressed.

Such a test would not of course involve Mercedes, given that the team has been banned from taking part.

“There happens to be a test here in three weeks,” said Horner. “At the moment it’s scheduled to be with young drivers – maybe it should be open to current drivers or test drivers that can give some decent feedback. And Pirelli should use it to test the rubber on a track where they’ve had some issues.”

“It’s something that we have to work together as the F1 world to solve this issue,” said Domenicali. “I had an idea – that of course we need to discuss in the next days – that we have a test here in Silverstone, supposedly with the young drivers.

“And Silverstone is a track that is very demanding for the tyres, in terms of stress, and we can really be ready to do something during these days to solve this issue, and I would say also with the racing drivers, because this is something for them that is also very important.

“So I can guarantee to you that from a team point of view we are totally open to trying to find a solution, because we all benefit from a solution to this issue.”

RBR boss Christian Horner says it’s up to Pirelli to act quickly to address the failure issue that struck several cars in the British GP.

Although Red Bull was not among the teams affected by a catastrophic failure the crew discovered that Sebastian Vettel was on the verge of a problem when they examined his tyres after his first pit stop, and found signs of delamination.

“Obviously with the failures that were happening it was quite a concern,” said Horner. “We had some issues, certainly on a set of Sebastian’s tyres at the first stop, that probably weren’t too far from a similar thing happening.

“I think the first thing you’re thinking about is the safety of your drivers, so the first thing is to try and understand what was causing it – was it a kerb, was it debris, was it something else?

“So we instructed both drivers to steer clear of the kerbs, to drive relatively conservatively, and obviously followed the advice of Pirelli with pressures and other bits and pieces. They seemed pretty random because obviously it happened on different compounds.

“Pirelli more than anybody will be very keen to try and understand and have to rectify it.”

Asked if the tyres were dangerous, he said: “Arguably today yes they are. But it’s something that Pirelli… It’s their product, it’s their technology, they need to understand it, and address it quickly.

“The most logical thing would be to go back to the tyres that have worked for them well previously. The tyres last year didn’t have these failures. Whatever’s changed has change, and you would have thought the most logical thing would be to go back to the tyres that have previously served them well.

“The problem with that is that teams are always perceived to be chasing competitive advantage, but I think from our perspective we were leading the race on these tyres today, we’ve won races on these tyres… I would urge to change purely on the ground of safety, because what happened today, obviously I’m sure Pirelli won’t be very happy about.”

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.”

Paul Di Resta has been excluded from qualifying for the British GP and will now start the race from the back of the grid after his car was found to be underweight.

It will be the third race in a row that the Scot has started from an unrepresentative position.

The Force India driver had qualified an excellent fifth, so that position now goes to Daniel Ricciardo, with Adrian Sutil, Romain Grosjean, Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button filling spots six to 10.

The FIA was alerted to a possible issue when the weight of the car and driver was found to be 0.5kgs below the 642.0kgs limit. Had there been a little bit fuel in the car – making it safely over the limit – there might not have been an issue.

However, the fact that the car  was already under the limit led to further investigation and to the car being drained of fuel. The final figure was 1.5kgs below the limit.

It’s believed that the discrepancy related to Paul’s weight when he stepped on the scales at the end of qualifying, and the number recorded proved to be lower than the usual figure. Teams keep a regular check on driver weights over the course of a weekend in order to avoid such issues, and Force India doesn’t understand why the problem occurred.

Sporting director Andy Stevenson and team CEO Otmar Szafnauer met with the stewards to discuss the matter, but to no avail.

The team did brielfy consider an appeal, on the grounds that the FIA scales were suspect, but decided to accept the decision.

Drivers, team personnel and officials took a little time out on Friday evening to pay their respects to Mark Robinson, the marshal who lost his life in an accident after the Canadian GP.

A minute’s silence was held under the F1 podium during the marshals’ pit walkabout, in order to allow Mark’s British colleagues to participate. Canadian flags and a special message featured on the podium.

The silence was followed by a spontaneous round of applause.

The FIA World Motor Sport Council has blocked the June 14-15 date for next year’s Le Mans 24 Hours “to ensure that a Formula One Grand Prix is not hosted that weekend.”

Crucially that also means that the New Jersey F1 race won’t clash with the US Open, as that date was in theory one week after the Canadian GP, and thus the expected slot for the new event.

A clash would have created a problem for NBC – and potentially hit the level of corporate entertainment in New Jersey, since high rollers might prefer to take up invitations to the golf.

It remains to be seen how Bernie Ecclestone manages to squeeze New Jersey into the calendar. Monaco is scheduled for May 25, which will make it impossible to run the North American races on June 1 and 8. It could be that the June 8 and 22 dates are used instead – but that presents obvious logistical problems.

The FIA World Motor Sport Council had today completed a lot of housekeeping related to the 2014 Sporting and Technical regulations, including the ratification of a return to in-season testing.

Also new is a penalty point system, with drivers facing a one-race ban should they accumulate 12 points. Points remain in place for 12 months which means they can be carried over into the following season.

The FIA also said that the Concorde Agreement will be signed shortly.

The full statement reads as follows:

The FIA President and the Commercial Rights Holder advised that negotiations regarding the Concorde Agreement were close to conclusion with the intention the contract between the FIA and FOM will be signed in the near future.

The following summarises the changes made to the 2014 Sporting Regulations:

Further to a request from Mercedes, it will be permitted to supply engines to a maximum of four Formula One teams in 2014.

A significant reduction in the amount of wind tunnel testing and CFD work has been imposed to help reduce costs and potentially allow two teams to share one wind tunnel.

Four two-day track tests will be allowed in season in place of the current eight one-day promotional days and the three-day young driver test. These will take place at tracks in Europe on the Tuesday and Wednesday after a race in order to ensure minimal additional resources are necessary.

In order to ensure that the cockpit rims either side of the driver’s head are stronger, the amount of deflection during the static load tests has been reduced from 20mm to 5mm.

Sauber chief designer Matt Morris is to take up a new role as engineering director at McLaren, Martin Whitmarsh has confirmed.

Morris told Sauber of his intention to leave some weeks ago, although the exact date of his departure has yet to be determined.

However his current job will be taken over as of Monday July 1 by Eric Gandelin, previously Head of Concept at the Swiss team.

The 39-year-old Morris previously worked at Cosworth and Williams, and was formerly a transmission specialist – a role that could clearly be very useful to McLaren.