Verstappen unhappy with Pirelli’s “vague” explanation for F1 tyre failures

The Red Bull driver lost the chance to win in Baku when he crashed out of the lead with five laps to go after suffering a dramatic left-rear tyre failure along the start finish straight, while Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll suffered a similar blowout.

A Pirelli investigation found that teams were not to blame for the failures, while it also concluded the issues were not debris-related.

“For me it was just a bit vague, what came out,” Verstappen said.

“The only thing I can say is from our side the team did everything like they should have done, I mean they followed all the guidelines with tyre pressures and stuff, so there was nothing to be found there.

“For sure we’ll go up on pressures here for this weekend. I’m 100% sure we will. Probably it has something to do with that, what happened in Baku, but it would also be nice to just know if it was tyre pressure related.

“Just speak out - I think that would be I think a bit easier to understand than I think the explanation we got so far, because the team didn’t do anything wrong.”

The FIA has increased tyre pressures and temperature checks for this weekend’s French Grand Prix, a response which has prompted some suggestions that teams could have been using clever tricks to play with pressures.

But Verstappen insisted Red Bull did not do anything untoward with its tyre parameters across the weekend in Baku.

“We gave them our tyre pressures and they were within the limits they set,” Verstappen stressed. “If those limits are not correct there is nothing we can do about it.

“We just follow what’s possible within the rules. If that means we have to go up on pressures we will, everyone will go up on pressures, but they say they didn’t have the correct measurements but we gave it to them after the race and it was shown we didn’t do anything wrong there.

“Also, Aston Martin didn’t do anything wrong, so they cannot put the blame on us, and I think they have to look at themselves.

“We are here happy to help, of course, with everything, and they already went up on pressure from Friday to Saturday, so that means something, but maybe it wasn’t enough. We’ll go up on pressures here for sure and hopefully that’s enough.”

Verstappen said he felt “lucky” to avoid a potentially bigger impact with the barriers had he speared off to the right instead of the left along the main straight.

“I was actually quite lucky to hit the wall on the right hand side instead of the left, as I think if id’ have gone left it would have been a really big impact,” he explained.

“Of course I was really upset and disappointed to not win that race but on the other hand I was quite lucky in that incident.

“It happens, it’s racing, of course things can happen but these kinds of things you don’t want to happen.”