• British Grand Prix

Silverstone tyre fiasco could have been avoided - Newey

Adrian Newey: "If three kilos of tread hits the following car in the helmet it doesn't bear thinking about" © Getty Images

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• News:
• F1 needs to change approach to tyre safety - Webber
  

• Drivers:
• Adrian Newey

• Teams:
• Red Bull

Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey believes the multiple tyre blow outs at Sunday's British Grand Prix could have been avoided if teams had acted together with Pirelli to change the construction earlier in the year.

Pirelli wanted to change the belt material of its tyres from steel to Kevlar at the Canadian Grand Prix but three teams - Ferrari, Force India and Lotus - blocked the change. Pirelli believes the failures at the British Grand Prix are a new issue and not directly related to the delaminations it was seeking to prevent earlier in the season, but Newey thinks the blow outs could have been avoided.

"From what I understand had we gone for a new construction we would not have had the catastrophic failures we had today," he was quoted by the Guardian. "The nature of the circuit aggravates - the combination of kerbs and high speed corners. Whether that is a problem in Germany [at the next grand prix] I wouldn't like to say."

After the delaminations earlier in the season, Pirelli refused to admit there was a safety issue with its tyres. It's reluctance to do so meant it had to seek the agreement of the teams to change the tyres, but with the safety of the drivers now at stake Newey believes a change should be pushed through.

"Safety-wise, there are potentially two issues," he said. "The car that has the failure but also suddenly you have three kilos of tread flying around. If that hits the following car in the helmet it doesn't bear thinking about. But that has to be a risk, and as such there is a lesson that should be learned from today and I will be very surprised if it isn't."

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