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30/06/2013





TYRE FAILURES TO BE CLOSELY EXAMINED

NEW BONDING PROCESS NOT AT FAULT

Silverstone, June 30, 2013 – Nico Rosberg has given Mercedes its first victory in the British Grand Prix since 1955 with first place at Silverstone.

The were a number of rear-left tyre failures during the race, which affected Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa (Ferrari), Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso) and Sergio Perez (McLaren). Pirelli engineers will investigate closely the cause of the failures ahead of next week’s German Grand Prix.

Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery said: “There have obviously been some issues with rear-left tyre failures which we have not seen before. We are taking the situation very seriously and we are currently investigating all tyres to determine the cause as soon as possible, ahead of the next Grand Prix in Germany. At the moment, we can’t really say much more until we have fully investigated and analysed all of these incidents, which is our top priority. However, we can exclude that the new bonding process, which we introduced at this race, is at cause for the tyre failures we have seen today. There might be some aspect to this circuit that impacts specifically on the latest version of our 2013 specification tyres but at this point we do not want to speculate but will now put together all the evidence to find out what happened and then take appropriate next steps should these be required.”

Fastest times of the day by compound:

Medium Hard Intermediate Wet First WEB – 1.33.401 ROS – 1.33.531 N/A N/A Second ALO – 1.34.090 HAM – 1.34.159 N/A N/A Third MAS – 1.35.273 ALO – 1.34.386 N/A N/A

Longest stint of the race: