Pirelli blames kerbs for Qatar GP tyre failures

Pirelli has concluded the kerbs at the Losail International Circuit were to blame for the four tyre failures during the recent Qatar Grand Prix.

Pirelli F1 boss Mario Isola had suggested after the race that was the cause and not as a result of any product defect.

Valtteri Bottas, Lando Norris, George Russell and Nicholas Latifi all suffered failures to the front-left tyre as they attempted to stretch their stints on one-stop strategies in the inaugural Qatari event.

Bottas' Mercedes was the first to suffer issues on lap 33 as his medium compound shredded, before Norris and then the two Williams drivers saw their hard tyres deflate late on.

Via a statement, Pirelli said: "The ongoing analysis that Pirelli is carrying out on the tyres of the cars that suffered deflations during the Qatar Grand Prix has provided some initial conclusions that exclude any production defects.

"Based on the findings obtained so far, the origin of the problem is mainly due to the amount of time these tyres were run on the kerbs, at high speed and with considerable lateral and vertical loads: a situation unique to the Losail circuit.

"The heavy demand caused by running over these kerbs, which isn't possible to measure from the data available before the race, damaged the tyre construction and led to a loss of pressure in the internal sidewall, which consequently caused the structure to collapse after several seconds.

"Pirelli has shared all the technical details of the analysis carried out so far with the FIA and the teams."

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