Pirelli to investigate Sebastian Vettel’s tyre deflation at Abu Dhabi GP – Formula 1 news
Pirelli says that it will be investigating Sebastian Vettel’s tyre failure which caused the Red Bull driver to spin off on the first lap of the recently concluded Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Vettel was leading from the pole and as he was beginning to gather some pace on the fast left hander, he lost control of the rear of the car and suffered sudden deflation on his right rear tyre. The deflation caused Vettel to go through the whole lap to
enter the pit stop with a deflated tyre.
The drive around the track to get to the pit stop with a deflated tyre is a probable cause of the damaged rear suspension which finally caused him to retire from the race after the first lap.
Pirelli though has stated that they will be looking into the matter to see what has caused the issue. Pirelli engineers will be investigating the issue further. Motorsport director Paul Hembery said it would work with the team but had no obvious answers
yet.
“Together with Red Bull Racing, we're still examining the remains of Sebastian Vettel's tyre in order to try and piece together what happened,” Hembery said.
“It certainly seems to be a very unusual incident and we've already been to look at the place with Sebastian: there seems to be no reason that is immediately obvious and the set of tyres was one that he had already used for qualifying. But until we know
for sure, there's no point in speculating,” he further added.
Lewis Hamilton told that he was not slowing down to let Vettel cross in the first corner, and team principal Martin Whitmarsh admitted that the first reaction of the team had been that it was due to a contact between the two cars of Hamilton and the German
which may have caused the damage. Whitmarsh though conceded that they took a sigh of relief when they found out that Hamilton was far away from Vettel’s car.
Vettel himself has said that he is perplexed at the sudden deflation of his car’s tyre and would like to know what might have caused the compound to behave the way it did.
It would be interesting to see what the Pirelli engineers finally conclude to be the reason behind the incident.
Tags: