Why Silverstone is "not friends" with tyres

For all of the millions, if not billions, of pounds sunk into car development each year, every Formula 1 race's fortunes ultimately come down to a single-specification component common on each car.

Sure, you're able to stack the odds in your favour with a brilliant engine or an advanced aerodynamics package but, if you can't make the tyres work, you can kiss your chances in a race goodbye. After all, the tyres are the only thing that separates the car from the ground, except in cases when the undertray lashes against the kerbs...

Early in the British Grand Prix weekend, when temperatures were abnormally hot and the population was suffocated by its own sweaty miasma, the soft tyres took the brunt of the punishment. Good for about half a lap amid the 35-degrees Celsius heatwave, the red-walled Pirellis began to melt like a soft camembert and led Lewis Hamilton to remark mid-practice that the softest compound was "rubbish".

But even that could not have prepared the six-time champion for the final lap of the race at Silverstone. Hamilton called it a "heart-in-mouth" moment as the left-front tyre began to wrinkle like Gordon Ramsay's forehead and tore itself asunder, rolling around on the rim as he attempted to wrestle his suddenly enfeebled W11 to a clutch victory.

Mere laps before, team-mate Valtteri Bottas had endured the same problem, as McLaren's Carlos Sainz Jr faced a similarly chastening experience as his own front-left began to shred itself to pieces and robbed him of a nailed-on fourth-place finish.

Silverstone is notoriously tough on tyres. If you wind the clock back as far as 2013, you may recall a series of high-profile tyre failures that ended the hopes of a handful of drivers - Hamilton included, having been on course for what would have been his first Mercedes victory before his left rear gave way (below).

Pirelli was forced to rethink its range of 2013 tyres and replaced the steel belts within with a Kevlar fibre design to minimise the risk of punctures. There had been a collection of tyre failures before in that season, as Pirelli pushed the limits of its high-degradation tyre construction, but Silverstone's punishing nature on the left-hand tyres rather exacerbated the situation.

The plethora of high-speed right-hand corners at Silverstone loads the two tyres on the left-hand side heavily, and in today's cars both Copse and Abbey are taken flat. As the car rolls outwards in response to the steering motion, the strain that those tyres take is particularly huge to keep the car on the island. Stowe and Becketts are also rather quick right-handers, adding to that load.

When you consider the extreme modern-day suspension solutions that teams run to draw as much grip from the tyres as possible, the Pirelli rubber takes an immense amount of punishment on a lap.

"Silverstone and the front-left tyre are not friends, never have been, but nowadays in Formula 1 with the loads that we put into that front left, it just makes for tough races" Lando Norris

Given that the bulk of the field switched to the hardest compound available, it's a bit of a worry that they didn't seem to stand up, especially when you consider that the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix - also due to take place at Silverstone - has softer compounds planned for use.

As Lando Norris explained post-race, the field quickly switched to tyre-management mode to keep their Pirellis in the game for as long as possible.

"Even on lap one, you can't push as much as you want," Norris told Sky after the race. "You can't just push into an understeer; as soon as you feel an understeer you just back out of it. If you use that understeer on lap one you grain the front tyre, and by lap four, lap five, it's game over.

"You're just in this bad position where you can't race as much as you want and you end up having problems like a lot of people had today where the front tyre just pops off.

"Silverstone and the front-left tyre are not friends, never have been, but nowadays in Formula 1 with the loads that we put into that front left, yeah, it just makes for tough races."

Much was made of the latent speed that the 2020 menagerie of cars has, and both Bottas and Hamilton broke the track record with consummate ease in qualifying. Much of that is down to being able to take the quickest corners flat-out, and even in race trim the cars were up on their times from last year.

With the same Pirelli construction carried over for this year after the drivers vetoed the introduction of the planned 2020 design, the Italian rubber specialists had to mandate higher pressure to quell the possibility of over-exerting the compounds.

Although the profusion of tyre wear was at least a contributing factor to the trio of delaminations that Hamilton, Bottas and Sainz faced, debris was also touted as a possibility. Earlier on, Kimi Raikkonen's Alfa Romeo began to shed parts of its front wing, and Hamilton suspected that the debris and detritus on-track was the reason why he was suddenly granted with an extra challenge halfway through the final lap.

"I am convinced it was debris; there was a lot of debris on the track," Hamilton explained. "There was one car - I think it might have been Kimi - that lost his wing, came off right in front of me in one of the laps. From the safety car, there was debris all the way through into Maggots and Becketts and I don't think that was cleaned up.

"The tyre was working totally fine to the point that I think I could pushed and done some decent laps towards the end pace-wise. I think I had some blistering on my right front, but I've driven with that for a long time and it's never really been an issue. There wasn't any previous signs something was coming."

Pirelli has launched a "360 degree" investigation into the events that descended on the British Grand Prix's final laps, in a bid to determine once and for all whether the tyres were simply over-extending their capabilities, or if the uncleared debris truly put the spanner in the last-lap works.

"We will obviously investigate what happened in the last few laps," said Pirelli's sporting director Mario Isola. "It's a bit early now to give you any conclusion. It could be high wear, because for sure tyres with 38 laps or more on this circuit are quite worn, but I'm not saying that the wear is the cause of the issue.

"It can be debris, because we had the pieces of the front wing of Kimi that were on track, but also some other debris. So that's why we want to investigate not only the tyres with a failure, but all the tyres used in the last few laps of the race, to understand if we find any other cut or any other possible indication on what happened.

"We don't want to exclude anything, we want to analyse everything 360 degrees and avoid excluding any possibility because it's a big mistake when you make these kinds of investigations. We have to consider all the possibilities.

"The level of wear is quite high, this is a factor, looking at the tyre from [Romain] Grosjean the first stint. It was completely worn, and I had a look at some tyres coming also from the second stint, and the level of wear is close to 100%. We have to understand if this is the cause of the failures or not. What is clear is that when you have a tyre that is completely worn the protection of the tread on the construction is less."

"If there is any debris, any small piece of carbon on track, it is easier to damage the tyre, because you don't have any rubber on the tyre that is protecting the cord, and some cords are visible on the tyres. So that's why I'm saying that the level of wear is close to 100%."

Pirelli has already suggested that it may cancel the 2021-compound test it had planned for next week's FP2 in a bid to give the teams more time with the race tyres, which has a knock-on effect when adequately preparing for its unplanned extra season with the current-spec

Isola stressed that a switch to softer compounds shouldn't cause any additional issues, given that teams would be resigned to stopping more than once regardless. But it would not be outside the bounds of possibility that F1 mandates at least two or three stops to cover off the threat of further tyre troubles, given that the British Grand Prix's medium compound will function as next weekend's hard tyre.

There's also the possibility that the frequent liberties that the drivers take on the inside of the Chapel curve may have weakened the tyre's constitution, and it may also be wise for Silverstone to safeguard against any further issues by beefing up the kerbs on that corner - lest the top layer of rubber receive any more cuts or lacerations to the surface.

But still, this is a worry - not just for next weekend's race, but for next season too. Pirelli has already suggested that it may cancel the 2021-compound test it had planned for next week's FP2 in a bid to give the teams more time with the race tyres, which has a knock-on effect when adequately preparing for its unplanned extra season with the current-spec.

Although next year's cars will be pruned of downforce as the teams had acquiesced with demands to remove some of the floor, F1's designers will certainly find ways to claw that back - and will seek to be at least on a par with this year's downforce output. And, if Pirelli suspects that debris was not the ultimate factor in the British Grand Prix's tyre-works displays, next year's presumed Silverstone round might play host to similar issues.

Pirelli has under a week to investigate and, for it's sake, let's hope that the can be found issue. But, perversely, the exploding front-left tyres added a last-minute injection of excitement - which is something they probably shouldn't be doing!