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Vettel still seeking long-term answers from Pirelli

Sebastian Vettel says Pirelli's immediate response to the Belgian Grand Prix tyre failures has left him more confident about the job it is doing in Formula 1, but insists lessons still need to be learned.

Maurizio Arrivabene, Ferrari Team Principal with Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari

Photo by: XPB Images

Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari
Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari
Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari with his punctured Pirelli tyre
The Pirelli race tyres of Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari are taken from the paddock for further investigation
The Pirelli race tyres of Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari are taken from the paddock for further investigation
Nico Rosberg, Mercedes AMG F1

The Ferrari driver was furious after the Spa race where he labelled the kind of blow out he suffered on the penultimate lap as 'unacceptable'.

And although stating that he is more comfortable with the situation following Pirelli's post-Spa investigation, he believes more work is needed to ensure there is no repeat situation in the future.

"I think it is not acceptable to have a blow-up at that sort of speed out of the blue," he said. "As I said after the race, there is nothing more to add.

"The investigations that have been going on, the stuff that got analysed and talked about, explains some of it – maybe not all of it – and are still ongoing.

"The most important thing is that we continue to make progress. From the Pirelli side, it looks professional, they have handled it with extreme care, and things are going in the right way."

Long-term change

Pirelli has introduced some short-term measures for this weekend in advising teams of new camber and pressure limits for the Italian GP.

The precautionary guideline for cambers is for half a degree less, while minimum pressures have been raised 5PSI at the rear and 4PSI at the front. The changes are approximately 25-30 per cent outside what is normal.

Vettel welcomed the moves, but thinks other changes should be evaluated for the longer term.

"There are some short terms changes, tyre pressures for example. We will see how it feels. To have a short term reaction, in a couple of days or weeks, is one thing, but long term we need to understand what happened.

"It is very clear that everyone is trying to do his best. I think we had a situation a couple of years ago which wasn't acceptable and there was immediate change, and we didn't have problems afterwards. So you can see the professional approach does work and leads you to the right result."

Debris focus

Nico Rosberg was equally comfortable with the work that Pirelli had done since Spa to get to the bottom of what had happened.

"It has been handled with extreme precision," he said. "I am confident that we will be here and we will be driving safely."

But with debris having been singled as a key contributory factor to the Spa failure, Felipe Massa suggested some focus should be on making more resilient rubber.

"It shouldn't be common. Debris we have every race – and some races we have more than others," he said. "For sure the tyres need to be strong enough to accept the kind of debris that we have on the track."

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