Pirelli explain why 1800 Australian Grand Prix tyres had to be recycled

Last weekend the Australian Grand Prix was due to take place but instead, it was called off at the last minute. Pirelli had brought 1,800 to be used throughout the weekend but they are not going to waste and will be sent back to the UK to be recycled. 

“We crush the tyres in order to fit them in fewer containers and send them back to the UK where we recycle them in a cement factory close to Didcot,” Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola told Motorsport.

“We burn them at high temperature, and we create energy, but not pollution.

“We are investigating many possible ways for recycling F1 tyres, but at the moment this is the way we recycle them after all our analysis.”

Why not use the tyres at another race? 

It may come as a surprise that the tyres aren't just saved for next time. It is due to the damage done to the tyre when they are put on the rims. 

“At the moment the limitation is that when we strip a tyre from the rim, we give a stress to the bead, and then obviously we are not confident to fit the tyre again because of the level of forces acting on these tyres is huge. So we don’t want to take any risk," Isola explained.

“For the European events we can carry them over because if we don’t use them we keep them fitted, and we load our trucks with tyres and rims.

“In the future, and considering that we will have a sole supplier and standard design for the rims, we will try to work together in order to find a way to fit and strip tyres and re-use them, but we need to make sure that we are not taking any risk.”

The tyres for the other Grand Prix's that have been postponed can be used again because they are yet to be fitted on the rims and therefore can be saved for a future date when we do finally get to start racing.