Pirelli: "Uncertain whether Verstappen would have made it without extra pit stop"

Valtteri Bottas, Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton all suffered punctures during the UK Grand Prix, but many more drivers were very close to a puncture. That's what Mario Isola told two days after the race at the Silverstone circuit. 

"It's true that we've seen many cuts in the tires, sometimes superficial and sometimes quite deep. That was especially the case on the tyres of the second stint", Isola noted against GPUpdate.net among others. Christian Horner already revealed that Max Verstappen had more than fifty of these cuts in his tire during his second stint.

Was pitstop Verstappen necessary?

Whether Verstappen could have finished the race on his old hard tyres is 'uncertain' according to Pirelli's estimates. "That's hard to say. Because those cuts are dangerous and they carry a lot of risk if they cut deep enough through any part of the construction. On a stressful track like Silverstone, with tyres that had to last 38 or 39 laps and with all the energy you expose the tyres to, that construction is obviously more exposed to debris because the wear and tear was high. But whether Verstappen would have made it without an extra pit stop is uncertain," says Isola.

The Italian top guy goes on to say that Nicholas Latifi also had to deal with a slowly deflated tyre in his final lap. "It's clear that most of the tyres were at their limits in terms of wear and tear. I don't think we have concluded that the cuts were responsible for the punctures of Mercedes and Sainz. Our theory is the high wear and tear and the enormous energy they have to endure at Silverstone", he concluded.