“There is not more transparency”– McLaren not happy with lack of tyre-safety clarity

“There is not more transparency”– McLaren’s Andreas Seidl is not happy with the tyre-safety clarity after two dangerous tyre punctures in Azerbaijan.

Pirelli got some questions to answer after Lance Stroll and Max Verstappen’s tyres burst similarly during the race in Azerbaijan. Red Bull even claimed that the tyres didn’t even warn of any prior vibrations.

Pirelli F1 chief Mario Isola revealed on Thursday that both Aston Martin and Red Bull were running lower pressures than expected in the Baku race but did not break any rules.

Meanwhile, McLaren’s boss Andreas Seidl is not happy with the clarification, even though he claims that the press release is full of “carefully-chosen” words. Still, it doesn’t provide an ample picture of what actually happened.

“What is a bit disappointing for us is that there is not more transparency in what actually happened, because it was a safety-critical topic,” Seidl said.

“Normally, that was a good practice in other cases in the past, with cases like that happening, there is transparency of what is happening, which didn’t happen so far towards the teams. So that’s a bit disappointing.”

Safest tyres in a while

Though Seidl criticizes Pirelli for not revealing the whole situation to them, he has also claimed that Pirelli has produced a safe product this year, and the overall judgment by the whole grid is an overreaction.

“There’s a lot of criticism up in the air towards Pirelli, but in the end, I think that’s not something we would support from our side,” Seidl said.

“I think Pirelli has produced a safe product for this year. If we look at our car, for example, in Baku, if you were running the car within the regulations and following the prescriptions from Pirelli, there was no issue with the tyre.

“So that’s why I think it would be important for everyone, for the entire paddock to have transparency in understanding what actually happened, and what was causing these failures in the end.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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