Pirelli aims to conclude Buemi crash investigation next week

Pirelli is aiming to conclude its investigation into a high-speed testing crash involving Red Bull driver Sebastien Buemi’s next week.

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Buemi crashed during a post-grand prix test at Silverstone’s Abbey corner. Pirelli motorsport director Mario Isola confirmed the accident involved a failure of the rear-left tyre but its cause had not been identified.

“We are investigating the tyre,” he said. “It takes some time because we had the tyre back from Silverstone at the beginning of the week.

“Obviously it requires an extensive investigation together with Red Bull and we are working with them to understand the reason of this failure, where it started from. The same prototype was tested in Spielberg because we are talking about a different construction of compound.”

Isola said the compound Buemi was running had previously been tested by Alfa Romeo at the Red Bull Ring and by Red Bull and Williams on the first day of the two-day Silverstone test. Buemi’s failure occured on his 11th lap on the tyre at the beginning of an #in-lap’.

“Obviously now the tyres, especially the rear-left, [are] in pieces so we need to investigate all the pieces. We are investigating on the other three tyres of the same set and the other prototypes that we still have of the same type.”

Pirelli is also studying video and telemetry from the crash. Isola said they have not ruled out the possibility an external factor caused the tyre failure.

“We want to conclude the investigation by next week and hopefully we can find something,” he said. “We are deeply investigating on everything: materials with a microscope with quality controls in the factory, all the areas to be should what could cause an issue.”

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