Formula 1

Vettel furious with Pirelli after late tyre failure

1 Mins read

Sebastian Vettel felt he deserved to finish on the podium at Spa-Francorchamps only to be denied by a rear tyre failure on which the German driver pinned the fault directly at the hands of tyre manufacturers Pirelli.

The Scuderia Ferrari driver had gambled on a one-stop strategy, and was running third with just two laps remaining when his right-rear tyre seemed to explode down the Kemmel Straight, meaning his chance of the podium was over.

“We deserved to finish on the podium but that’s racing,” reflected Vettel. “A different thing though is not to finish the race because of what happened.

“I think this is not easy to accept for a driver, even if it’s not as bad as in Silverstone few years ago, but still we need to talk to each other as it can’t happen without prior notice.

“There’s no explanation for what happened: it’s not a puncture, the tire just exploded.”

Talking to the BBC after the race, Vettel was obviously furious with Pirelli, and felt that he would have been in a much worse position had the tyre failed heading into Eau Rouge rather than out of it.

“Things like that are not allowed to happen,” he said to the BBC. “If it happened 200 metres earlier, I’m not standing here now, I’d be stuck in Eau Rouge.

“I don’t know what else needs to happen. [Tyres are] a theme that keeps coming around, that nobody is mentioning, but is unacceptable.”

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