Australia tyres to fuel an Oxfordshire cement factory

Pirelli will repurpose all 1,800 tyres that were shipped for use in the Australian Grand Prix, the tyres now being shipped to an Oxfordshire cement factory where they will be used as fuel.

Pirelli motorsport director Mario Isola explained to Motorsport.com why tyres cannot be simply removed from the rims and fitted again at a later date, the tyres for use in Melbourne having been fitted prior to the events cancellation.

"We are not confident about fitting the tyre again, because of the level of forces acting on these tyres is huge," said Isola

"The only problem is for tyres that are already fitted, because in that case those tyres are going to be stripped.

"We finished mounting the tyres on Thursday afternoon, and then we had to dismount everything. We don't want to take any risk."

Fortunately for Pirelli, the tyres that had been prepared for use in Bahrain and Vietnam have not been fitted to the rims so can be used again.

The tyres from Melbourne will not go completely to waste despite not seeing any track action. Instead, they will be shipped to an Oxfordshire cement factory

"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," continued Isola.

"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."

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