Pirelli shares Qatar findings: 'Tyre blowouts were caused by this'

During the Qatar Grand Prix two weeks ago we saw several blowouts during the race, which caused dangerous situations. Pirelli now announces the first findings of their investigation.

No fewer than four drivers suffered tyre failures during the race in Qatar, namely Valtteri Bottas, Nicholas Latifi, George Russell and Lando Norris. Bottas and Latifi were unable to finish the race.

Pirelli has announced its initial findings following their investigation. In the statement on the official website of F1 they write the following: "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." In the future, the tyre supplier will have to prevent such situations from occurring again at the Qatar circuit, but the deal with the circuit will not start until 2023.