Pirelli releases official cause for Qatar GP tyre failures
Dec.3 - During last grand prix in Qatar we saw a lot of tyre failures in the end of the race. All tyres have been analysed by Pirelli in Italy last weeks.
The ongoing analysis that Pirelli has been carrying out on the tyres of the cars that suffered deflations during the Qatar Grand Prix has provided some initial conclusions that exclude any production defects.
Based on the findings obtained so far, the origin of the problem is mainly due to the amount of time these tyres were run on the kerbs, at high speed and with considerable lateral and vertical loads: a situation unique to the Losail circuit. The heavy demand caused by running over these kerbs, which isn't possible to measure from the data available before the race, damaged the tyre construction and led to a loss of pressure in the internal sidewall, which consequently caused the structure to collapse after several seconds.
Pirelli has already shared all the technical details of the analysis carried out so far with the FIA and the Formula one teams.
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Other than mainly tire wear of rubber or cuts I have not noticed this type of "flex fatigue" degradation in past of so many tires at the same time in Qatar. This opens up something for F1 teams and especially Pirelli to track and develop greater understanding of rubber, textile & cord compounding to better predict and anticipate problems.
Bring back competition for tyre supply to stop complacency of single sourcing
Pirelli have a monopoly which is not good for the sport and may hinder development going forward