Pirelli: The teams have enough tires

Free practice on Friday at Silverstone was very sad, with some drivers not even trying to set a time in these particularly delicate conditions. Bruno Senna (Williams) and Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) also made a mistake by being trapped by the wet track where the drivers had to manage significant aquaplaning. The teams stressed that they only had three sets of wet tires per weekend and that they preferred to save their rubber for the race. However, Paul Hembery, Pirelli's sporting director, responded by saying that the lifespan of the blue sidewall tires was sufficient to cover the entire weekend and that more trains allocated to the teams would not have made much of a difference to the day. .

According to him, the teams were especially afraid of seeing their drivers make mistakes. The sporting director of the Italian manufacturer also wanted to recall the exceptional nature of the situation. “The rain tires are supposed to last 60 laps, so we cannot say that the number of tires is insufficient since we can cover 180 laps. Would the drivers have driven more with six sets of tires? And how many weekends with three consecutive days of rain can we see? One every five years, something like that. We would therefore have to spend 500 or a million euros to ensure an eventuality which could occur every five years. We don't want to have 000 people coming to see cars that aren't running, but we have to wonder if the drivers would have driven more with more tires. Only the teams can answer this question. Some teams worked harder than others and recognized that their efforts were in vain because the conditions were too bad. »