Why were there so many punctures in Qatar?

The end of the Qatar Grand Prix was marked by a series of punctures. If four pilots (Valtteri Bottas, Nicholas latifi, George Russell and Lando Norris) were victims of this problem, the first two cited had to abandon. And for the British driver, this made him lose his place in the Top 5. After the race, everyone was surprised to lose a wheel. “It happened suddenly” according to the teammate of Lewis Hamilton. “You don't expect the tire to explode, especially not on hard tires” regrets the pilot McLaren. “I had no idea my tire was about to get a flat” explains the Canadian, also forced to retire like Valtteri Bottas. They all have one thing in common: the left front tire was affected.

After this series of incidents, reminiscent of the lively end of the race at Silverstone last year, all eyes were on Pirelli. As a reminder, for the first arrival of the single-seaters of F1 on the Losail track, Pirelli had chosen to bring its three ranges of hardest tires. After the Qatar Grand Prix, Mario Isola, the boss of the Italian company, judged that tire pressure had a determining role.

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“The left front was affected because it's the most stressed tire, but I don't want to say that it was caused by excessive energy or anything like that, explains Mario Isola on Sky Sports F1. The first thing I can share with you is that all the tires were worn, almost 100%. We have cuts on the tires that need to be understood if they were caused before the loss of pressure or after the loss of pressure.”

Before heading into the last two rounds of the season, the Italian manufacturer is awaiting complete feedback from the various teams to understand and prevent such incidents from happening again in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. 

“We are waiting for telemetry data from the teams, he added. This is a really important part of understanding if the loss of pressure was sudden and what the time was for it. All drivers were able to return to the pits, so they lost pressure, but in enough time to control the car and return to the pits. We see a lot of high-speed curb impacts here.” 

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Thanks to the data collected during free practice and qualifying, a two-stop strategy was strongly recommended by Pirelli. The four drivers were all fitted with hard tires and had only made one stop before the puncture. 

« But the reason we predicted a two-stop strategy was mainly because of the tire wear data we collected on Friday, and the wear on the left front was quite high. So today, for example, front-left and rear-left were both 100% ported. But the reason why we had a puncture on the left front needs to be investigated.”

The last two rounds of the season begin in 2 weeks, with the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix then the round in Abu Dhabi.

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