Pirelli have explained their findings after investigating why four drivers suffered front-left tyre failures at the Qatar Grand Prix. During the race at the Losail International Circuit, Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas was robbed of an opportunity to fight for the podium as he suffered a front-left tyre failure. This was followed by failures for both Williams drivers Nicholas Latifi and George Russell, as well as McLaren's Lando Norris. While Bottas (after 35 laps on Mediums) and Russell and Latifi (both after 31 laps on Hards) experienced their issues a long way into their second stints, Norris' came after only 23 laps with the Hard compound. Thankfully, none of the failures resulted in any loss of control for the drivers, and Pirelli announced afterwards that they would investigate the causes thoroughly back at their factory in Milan. On Friday in Saudi Arabia, Pirelli announced that they have reached some initial conclusions that exclude "any production defects". "Based on the findings obtained so far, the origin of the problem is mainly due to the amount of time these tyres were run on the kerbs, at high speed and with considerable lateral and vertical loads," read the statement from Pirelli. "[This is] a situation unique to the Losail circuit. The heavy demand caused by running over these kerbs, which isn't possible to measure from the data available before the race, damaged the tyre construction and led to a loss of pressure in the internal sidewall, which consequently caused the structure to collapse after several seconds." Pirelli confirmed that the technical details from their investigations have been shared with the FIA and all of the teams.
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