Horner: Tyres give Mercedes the advantage

Red Bull boss Christian Horner says that tyre degradation will be one of the main areas teams have to concentrate on to achieve a good result at this year’s British Grand Prix.

Silverstone has recent history of tyre issues, with there being five blowouts in one weekend in 2013 and Pirelli will be hoping that lightning does not strike twice.

The Silverstone circuit has also been resurfaced, so the new construction of tyre that Pirelli have designed will be once again used, as it was in Spain and France, which have also recently been resurfaced. 

Mercedes have won both races with the new restructured tyre, and Horner feels that the German team will be strong this weekend because of this.

“Last year we had Kimi [Raikkonen] have a tyre blow out, and Sebastian [Vettel] blew a tyre as well,” Horner told Autosport

“So they have introduced this new construction of tyre for the new-surface races, and that has suited Mercedes incredibly well.

“Barcelona and Paul Ricard were both tracks where they have had wins.

“You can see why Toto [Wolff] has been campaigning to keep this tyre for the rest of the year.

“I think that they will be very strong at Silverstone, but the temperatures if this heat wave continues; we see that these tyres are very sensitive to heat. That could be a really interesting variable thrown into the mix.”

Great Britain has seen unusually hot and dry weather in the past weeks and that is expected to continue into the F1 weekend, with temperatures of up to 28C expected on race day.

Horner continued: “Silverstone is always extremes, it either extremely cold, extremely wet or extremely windy. Could this year be extremely hot?”