Sebastian Vettel says his tyre "exploded out of the blue" after suffering a scary blowout during the Austrian Grand Prix.
Vettel started from ninth on super-soft tyres and had been on the red-striped compound for 26 laps when the right rear exploded on the start/finish straight. Though he had stretched that set out for a long time Vettel insists there had been nothing to suggest the tyre was nearing the end of its life before the failure.
"I think I obviously felt it when it was too late and the tyre exploded out of the blue," Vettel said. "There were no signs before that, everything was normal. I also spoke to the people on the pit wall, everything looked the same, the pace was the same as the lap before, so..."
Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene confirmed there had been "zero sign" that the tyre was in trouble in the laps before the blowout. Vettel said the plan had always been to execute a long first stint.
"Obviously the idea was to go as long as possible, everybody was going longer on the tyres than expected. Nobody came in in the first ten laps, so, yeah, not much to say. Completely a question mark over why the tyre failed.
"It was [a team decision]. It was clear everybody had much more tyre life than we expected going into the race so in the end 27 laps is not much for that compound. Kimi did more than 20 laps on the ultra-soft, there were other people that had more laps on the supersoft. Out of nothing the tyre exploded."
After the race, Pirelli confirmed it is working with Ferrari to understand why the puncture occurred.