Pirelli blames flat spot for blown tyre
Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel has taken his third win in a row to extend his championship lead at the Korean Grand Prix. Sergio Perez however drew much attention as his front right tyre delaminated on the straight.
All the drivers started on the P Zero Red supersoft tyre, with the exception of Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo, who started the race on the P Zero White medium. After some spots of rain during the morning, conditions remained dry in Korea throughout the afternoon, with the race starting in ambient temperatures of 27 degrees centigrade and track temperatures of 29 degrees.
Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery said: “With the medium compound proving to be the ideal race tyre, most drivers aimed to get onto it as soon as possible, with teams reacting from the start of the race to the strategies that had been put in place by their immediate rivals. We had a tyre choice that may have been aggressive, with the supersoft being a perfect qualifying tyre and the medium optimal for the race, but this was in accordance with the requests of many of the teams.
"Regarding Sergio Perez’s front-right tyre issue we have been able to determine very quickly that it was the result of a flat spot caused by a lock-up under heavy braking. We’re obviously on exactly the same construction as we raced here last year, so there’s no underlying problem, while flat spots or punctures have just always been an integral part of racing. The two safety car periods had an important effect on the race strategy, which meant that all the finishers apart from Jenson Button completed the race with just two stops. Without safety cars, we probably would have seen more people stopping three times, but it was always going to be within the two to three stop window, which has been our target since we came into Formula One.”
