Mark Hughes: Pirelli's horror show

The crowd's hero was leading his home grand prix, looked to have it all under control. It was a beautiful sunny day and all was right with the world...

Bang! "I felt it fractionally before it actually went," said Lewis Hamilton a couple of hours later, still numb of emotion. "It just suddenly went a bit loose as I was coming out of Turn 5. I didn't think it was about to explode; I just felt something a bit strange. Then it went. You're just a passenger for a moment, because as the left-rear drops down, the front-right is up in the air and you're in fifth gear with only two wheels on the ground, fighting for control."

Hamilton had most of the lap to complete before he could crawl into the pits; his sidewall and its Pirelli lettering remained intact, but the fibres attached to it flailed around like a Catherine wheel. It was a beautiful pattern with an ugly message. It was lap eight, and that message carried on the gusting wind, a portent of what was to come.

One lap later Fernando Alonso was exiting Stowe when he felt a sudden deflation of the right-rear. It didn't go bang - and if it had to happen, it did so at the perfect place: just before the pit entry. He came in and had his one fresh set of hard tyres fitted. But the Ferrari tyre failure had occurred without the world at large noticing. It looked just like a slightly early first stop in a three-stop strategy. The balance lay between two and three stops, with the former slightly quicker in ideal theory but the latter not disastrous if the degradation - wear of the left front - forced you into it.

But the next failure - on the sister car of Felipe Massa - was every bit as public as Hamilton's, and in almost the same place. Felipe, running in fourth after a great start, had his left-rear explode spectacularly as he rounded the Aintree left-hander, just as he was changing up into fifth and entering the Wellington Straight. The Ferrari looped around in the run-off and limped slowly in.

Hamilton's dream ended with a bang © XPB

Informed by now of Alonso's tyre failure, race director Charlie Whiting was staring at three tyre failures in the space of two laps, and was giving serious consideration to red-flagging the race. Especially as this came on top of the similar failure on Saturday morning of Sergio Perez's left-rear as the McLaren had exited Copse.

It would have been easy to red-flag the race, but then what? That was the difficult bit, with 120,000 paying fans having paid to watch a grand prix. You wouldn't have wanted to be Charlie at this point. In the hazy background swirled the hangover of the Mercedes Barcelona test and the recent FIA Tribunal, and the two situations were far from unconnected.

Pirelli technicians were by now hurriedly carrying the sorry remains of rear tyres in unmarked bags to their garage in a desperate autopsy. In the meantime teams were advised to increase tyre pressures by 2psi and to tell their drivers to stay off the kerbs.

While Hamilton had got cleanly away from pole, surging into an unchallenged lead, Nico Rosberg in the sister Mercedes was slow away, instantly zapped by Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull. But Rosberg's start was considerably better than Mark Webber's in the other Red Bull. "What the hell happened there?" he demanded of his crew later. After a couple of good starts in recent races, we were mysteriously back to the Webber getaways of old.

As he fell backwards into the pack he was pincered by the faster-moving cars of Alonso and Romain Grosjean into Abbey. The Lotus clipped the Red Bull's front wing, a piece of red-and-blue carbon-fibre flying high into the air, Webber out on the run-off and bundled yet further down the pack as they rushed into the right-hander of Village. Now back in 14th and with a damaged wing, Webber's chances in his final British Grand Prix looked doomed. But this was to be no normal race.

Hamilton was up and away. There was to be no tyre-pussyfooting around for this one. The medium and hard-compound tyres were expected to be robust. But just to be sure, Mercedes had based its strategy around three-stopping (keeping the stint lengths to a minimum) and favouring the hard - of which both drivers had three unused sets.

"We decided to just go flat-out and see where that took us," said team boss Ross Brawn. "Sometimes we get into a defensive mode and that's hurt us. So we decided we'd take the race to them."

Red Bull, meanwhile, reckoned on the theoretically faster two-stop, while open to the idea of converting to a three if the front wear proved higher than expected.

Hamilton was 0.8s ahead at the end of the first lap. The Merc was flying down the straights faster than the chasing Red Bull, and it was just as quick through the turns. It had great traction out of Club onto the pit straight, and also through the Luffield section onto the old pit straight, towards Copse.

Alonso also survived a tyre scare © LAT

The Union Flags flew in the stiff wind and the crowd got to see what it had come for, although there was an early element of disappointment as Jenson Button was passed on the fifth lap by McLaren team-mate Sergio Perez, and by the recovering Webber not long after. Jenson had been one of just seven drivers to start on the hard tyre as opposed to the medium, and he just could not induce any heat in it - and that in turn created graining fronts.

Alonso, by contrast, was finding the Ferrari rather better balanced than in the cooler conditions of qualifying and was making amends for his compromised start.

"I was so lucky I didn't lose my front wing at the first corner when I locked up," he said. He went past Romain Grosjean for eighth exiting Woodcote on the second lap, the Lotus suffering the tyre-eating effects of the front wing damaged in the first-corner contact with Webber. Romain would soon be in for fresh rubber.

Hamilton had his lead over Vettel out to over 2s by the fifth lap - enough that he was out of DRS reach and able to respond a lap later to any Vettel pitstop without losing position. He then simply drove to the gap. Then the tyre went pop. By the time he'd made his way around the rest of the lap, the flailing rubber had damaged the floor extensively, but a fresh set of hards was fitted and he rejoined a solid last.

Vettel was now leading Rosberg by a couple of seconds, the pair pulling away at a quick rate from Adrian Sutil, the Force India having quite a queue behind it, just exaggerating the advantage and strategic flexibility of the two leaders.

Then came the Pirelli horror show. During this time there were routine stops for the top 10, which juggled the order only slightly - Alonso got past Kimi Raikkonen for fourth, while Grosjean's early stop had temporarily boosted him ahead of Kimi too, but with his wing damage he was holding up the sister Lotus.

By now Red Bull had inspected the tyres that had come off Vettel's car and had discovered ominous cuts to the left rear. "I think we were very lucky there," said team chief Christian Horner. "It showed all the signs of imminent failure." Vettel was reminded to stay off the kerbs.

Just as he was being told this, the yet-to-stop Toro Rosso of Jean Eric Vergne suffered an explosion of the left rear as he accelerated onto Hangar Straight at around 180mph. This happened right in front of the two Lotuses, which were in the process of swapping positions (as instructed by the team). A big chunk of the Toro Rosso rubber was flung direct onto Raikkonen's helmet, fortunately without harm.

Vergne was another victim of the tyre issues © LAT

The safety car was now deployed to clear the various debris from four blown tyres at various parts of the track. This tyre drama was shaping up into something to rival that of Indianapolis 2005. For seven laps the safety car ran, giving time for more information to come from Pirelli.

All the failures seemed to have been triggered from damage to the inside shoulder. The hope now was that with the drivers having been warned, the pressures of the tyres fitted at the stops having been increased and the fuel load reducing the demands on the tyres anyway, the failures would stop. They did - for a while.

Seven laps behind the safety car had theoretically moved the strategy towards a two-stop - but with teams naturally looking to minimise stint lengths on the tyres, the trend was actually in the other direction and towards a three-stop. Upon the restart Vettel and Rosberg were clean away, quickly building their gap over Sutil all over again, with Alonso, Raikkonen, Grosjean and Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso in a queue behind.

Of the recovery drives, Webber - who'd had a new nose fitted at his stop - went past Perez for ninth in a move that thrilled for several corners, Paul di Resta was up to 11th having started at the back, and Hamilton was 14th and soon to devour the Saubers ahead.

He then set about passing di Resta, and that too was an entertaining tussle in which the Mercedes eventually came out on top. It was a great performance by Lewis in a damaged car, but not one he was enjoying much.

"I was very aware that a tyre might go at any moment," he admitted. "That's the first time in my whole racing career I've ever worried about something like that."

Massa, meanwhile, was still down near the back but, having had his 15s deficit from the next car wiped by the safety car, was soon scything through the backmarkers in the Ferrari. He too was concerned about a repeat failure, "but I just put my trust in God that I'd be OK." That's what it was coming down to, even for the non-believers...

On lap 29 another failure: Esteban Gutierrez's Sauber blew its left-front approaching Stowe, the failure damaging the wing and leaving a lump of carbon-fibre on the track.

The second stops came and went, but only the minor places changed. Lotus gambled on its easy tyre usage to come in early, this and subsequent strong pace jumping Raikkonen past Alonso and Sutil to go a distant third, with Alonso and Webber also jumping the Force India, which simply didn't have their pace around the stops.

Vettel's race came to an end on lap 41 © XPB

Hamilton was out of sequence and briefly diced with Raikkonen and Alonso before his second stop, thrilling the fans from Luffield to Copse. On the 35th lap Webber was able to use his DRS to pass Alonso for fourth down Hangar Straight, the bit really between his teeth now.

Sticking with Vettel's two-stop plan and resolving to stay out to the end was a nerve-wracking call for Red Bull. Still leading the race by a couple of seconds, it wasn't sure if Rosberg was going to make a third stop now.

If he did, the team could respond. The question resolved itself on lap 43, just after Alonso had pitted from fourth. Just a couple of seconds after passing the pit-entry road between Stowe and Club, Rosberg felt a sudden vibration. He radioed in and the team could see immediately a problem with the left-rear.

At almost the same moment, leader Vettel went to change down for Club - and found no drive. He coasted around Club and the crowd cheered as he pulled to the side of the track adjacent to the pit wall. With the car in a dangerous position the safety car was deployed again. This obliged the whole pack to lap at the safety-car delta speed - which in turn ensured that Rosberg's limping pace on his delicate failing tyre was not unduly costly.

He could do this pitstop and still emerge in the lead, such was his advantage over second-placed Raikkonen. Had Vettel pulled over earlier on the other side of the track, where the car could have been moved, it is likely that Raikkonen would have won this race, as Rosberg's limp pitwards would have lost him a crucial amount of time.

Instead, Nico was in and under way again on his final fresh set of hard tyres. The safety car created a dilemma for everyone: do you stay out, retaining or gaining position with just nine laps to go; or do you stop for the fresh tyres and charge back past those on old rubber? There wasn't an obvious right answer.

Staying out were Raikkonen, Sutil and Ricciardo - making them second, third and fourth respectively. Pitting for new rubber was Webber, who dropped a place to fifth ahead of the McLarens, which had gambled on staying out.

The longer the safety car circulated, the more it favoured those staying out, and Webber in particular was impatient for it to come in, but it was taking a time to manoeuvre Vettel's dead car into the pitlane. The weaving, snaking pack followed behind the rumbling SLS until the end of lap 45: seven laps for the new-tyred cars to try to find a way past the desperately defending cars on old rubber.

Raikkonen's strategy proved wrong in the end © LAT

It was a thrilling end to a dramatic day, as Webber sliced by Ricciardo at Brooklands, a move he repeated on Sutil a lap later. Alonso meanwhile dived by Button into Copse and was tight into the slipstream of Perez as they entered Hangar Straight. The McLaren's left-rear then exploded.

Alonso reacted incredibly. He was doing 179mph and steered right, momentarily generating 3.6 lateral g on the straight in avoidance. Perez limped pitwards but was withdrawn by the team with a heavily damaged floor. Lotus would make a similar tactical withdrawal of Grosjean, with the front wing damaged heavily from tyre debris.

Webber was now all over Raikkonen as Alonso - who had now passed Ricciardo - attacked Sutil. Mark went by the Lotus into Copse and Fernando took the Force India into Club. Hamilton was now in the picture too, having had much of his deficit wiped out by the safety car - and he followed Alonso past Sutil.

Webber was just 1.3s behind Rosberg at the end of the 48th lap, straining to get into DRS range. Rosberg though was able to respond - his hard tyres were actually newer than Webber's mediums, and for the last few laps he stayed just out of touch to take his third victory of the year. His win owed much to fortune, but he capitalised perfectly.

Webber got a great response from the crowd for his final grand prix here, while for Alonso third was reward for a typically ballsy and relentless performance, as he held off Hamilton across the line.

Raikkonen took a disappointing fifth, while Massa enjoyed a charging final few laps to take sixth ahead of Sutil and Ricciardo, who rued having stayed out on old rubber. Di Resta and Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg completed the points scorers - and Button was bundled down the pack on old tyres that would not warm up after the restart.

Later, guided by information sourced from a couple of drivers, we took a walk up to Aintree, the corner leading onto Wellington Straight. The inside kerb is heavily serrated, but there were black rubber marks going directly over those serrations - at just where the inner shoulder of the left-rear would be. We moved onto the last part of Becketts.

Beyond the extremities of the exit kerb are old-fashioned and rough miniature concrete blocks, slightly above the level of the kerb, but dropping below it by the end of the kerbing. Again, extensive tyre marks across it. Where the concrete drops below the level of the kerbing, the inside shoulder of the left-rear would have been pinched. The tyres should be able to withstand this - but at least an answer to why Silverstone had triggered so many failures seemed to suggest itself.

"This is unacceptable," Massa had said. He knows all about debris flying towards him - and at one point he had experienced it again. This has gone beyond political and competitive gamesmanship. Events at Silverstone may at least have galvanised everyone toward a solution.