“Pirelli will put the puncture of Perez down to a lock-up but the reason the
drivers are locking up is because there’s no tread left.”
Hembery hit back, saying that the lock-up was entirely predictable as Perez
was 21 laps into a stint on a set of tyres that were only designed to last
for 20 laps.
He said that the Perez blowout was not linked to the tyre structure issues
which had caused the Silverstone failures, Pirelli having switched back to
old tyre structures in the wake of the British Grand Prix.
“There are two issues here that Mark is conflating,” Hembery told The
Telegraph. “Firstly the situation with Sergio’s tyre. It was nothing to do
with delaminations earlier in the season. He had a major lock-up and
flat-spotted.
“The other issue about degradation is the same old story. You can have a
philosophical difference of opinion – as Michael [Schumacher] had last year
– but we are only doing what we were asked to do, which is to create two to
three stops per race. If they want tyres to last all race we can do that,
too.”