Flat tire in Baku: Pirelli claims that the teams are not at fault
On Thursday, Mario Isola gave a press conference in which he stated that Red Bull and Aston Martin were running with too low pressures in Baku. The Pirelli director added that the teams were nevertheless compliant.
At the beginning of the week, the manufacturer published its report on punctures that led to the accidents of Max Verstappen and Lance Stroll in Baku. In this document, Pirelli argued that no manufacturing defect was found in the tires, but that the driving conditions would be at the origin of the accidents.
This Thursday, during a press conference, the director of Pirelli, Mario Isola, announced that Red Bull and Aston Martin drivers were running with pressures that were too low at the time of the accidents. However, the manufacturer’s director admitted that the teams were not at fault.
The two teams complied with the minimum required pressures at the start, but they changed during the Grand Prix. According to Pirelli, with too low pressure in a tire at the end of a stint, the left rear casing wouldn’t have withstood the pressures it was subjected to.
« What happened in Baku is simply that the expected driving conditions were different from the actual driving conditions, and that’s what caused a failure. When a lot of energy goes into these tires, with lower pressure than expected, it causes what is called waves on the sidewalls. The waves place a lot of energy inside the tire shoulder. And at some point, the tire gives way. That’s what happened, and that’s why we experienced this situation in Baku,” Mario Isola said.
Simulation is not worth reality.
After stating that the teams did not have enough air in their tires, Mario Isola pointed out a second problem, coming from Pirelli. The Italian brand argues that the data provided in advance by the teams did not match reality, thus skewing its performance forecasts.
When we prepare the prescriptions [for the minimum pressure], we receive the simulations and we take margins into account. The expected loads, the aerodynamic support or the speed are simulated, so it is not exactly the value we find on the track. In this case, in Baku, we also found parameters that were not exactly those discovered on the track, declares Isola.
« We assume they are running at a certain pressure and with a certain camber. And with a margin, of course, we run in conditions that are correct for the tires. In this case, we have not reached these conditions, not because the teams were going against the regulations, but because they were looking for performance, as always, and this created a scenario different from what we expected. And this different scenario was mainly that the tires were at a lower pressure than expected. »
The Italian wanted to clarify that he does not blame the teams because, in the regulations, nothing specifies a minimum pressure during rolling. Since Red Bull and Aston Martin respected the starting pressures, the teams were then in compliance. However, Isola recalls that this point will change next year with the new regulations.
If the regulations do not specify a minimum rolling pressure to be respected, I cannot say that they are violating the regulations in their quest for performance. If they comply with the starting pressure, they are within the regulatory framework. If the same thing happens next year when we impose a rolling pressure with the sensor, then it will be a violation. But this is not the case this year, he added.
