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Jun
30th

F1: Heat on Pirelli after tire-exploding British GP

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Adapted from GMM

F1's intense heat on Pirelli only got hotter on Sunday, as the British grand prix took place amid shards of exploding tire rubber.

Lewis Hamilton, just one of four drivers who had spectacular rear failures during the Silverstone race, was comfortably leading when he had his problem.

"They need to do something," Hamilton told British broadcaster Sky.

"It's unacceptable," said, on the BBC, the Mercedes driver, whose teammate Nico Rosberg - who won - also had a partial tire failure just as a safety car period began.

On-board footage from Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso's cars showed how the big chunks of flying tire debris could have hurt a driver.

McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale, whose driver Sergio Perez had one of the exploding failures, insisted: "We have to make sure our drivers are safe."

Jenson Button agreed: "The cars behind get hit by rubber that has metal in it.  It's obvious it's got to change.  It's very scary."

Recently, Pirelli wanted to make a fundamental change to the tire construction - replacing an internal steel band with a kevlar one - to stop delaminations, but teams like Lotus blocked the move.

F1's official supplier instead had to tackle the issue by deploying a new kind of glue to bind the tread.

Pirelli's Paul Hembery refused to immediately comment pending an investigation, despite the international media relentlessly bombarding him with questions.

"Sorry," he told them.  "When we have the answers, we'll let you know."


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