Pirelli safety concerns delay Qatar Sprint, GP may become three stopper

The FIA said a 10-minute session would be held before the sprint shootout that decides the grid for the 100km race to allow drivers to adjust to track changes, with revisions to the track limits at Turns 12 and 13.

The shootout will start 20 minutes later than scheduled at 13:20 GMT, with the 19-lap sprint then going ahead as planned at 17:30 GMT.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen is poised to win his third F1 Championship in the Sprint, the Red Bull driver needing to score only three points to put the title out of reach of team mate Sergio Perez. Verstappen has already qualified on pole for Sunday's grand prix.

Further tyre analysis will be carried out after the Sprint to decide if further action is needed before Sunday's main event.

Should that be the case, a directive will be issued ordering teams not to exceed 20 laps on new tyres used in the race.

"This number would rise to 22 for any used tyres fitted in the race, to account for in-out laps in qualifying," it added. "All drivers will be obliged to perform at least three tyre-change pitstops during the race."

Pirelli's analysis of tyres used in Friday's practice found a separation in the sidewall between the topping compound and the carcass cords on many of those used for around 20 laps.

"It is the view of the FIA and Pirelli that a significant number of additional laps on these tyres could result in circumferential damage of the tyres with subsequent air loss," added the governing body.

"Tyres analysed with lower lap numbers showed a much-reduced extent of the issue," the FIA revealed.

The FIA said the issue had likely been caused by the tyre sidewall coming into contact with the 50mm "pyramid" kerbs used at the circuit, with drivers riding the kerbs to get the quickest lap time.

FIA single seater director Nikolas Tombazis commented on the matter on Sky Sports F1, he said: "To be clear, the kerb used is of an FIA specification.

"The track have done a good job to put it together, all of the surfacing, we’ve got no complaint against the track," he added.

"They’ve used all the guidelines, but these interactions between tyres and kerbs can be very complicated and can depend on a lot of relatively subtle details, which obviously these indicate that now we need to do more research there to improve the situation further, both from a tyre and a kerb point of view.

"We did consider modifying the kerbs, but in the time we had from very late last night until today, that would not have been possible. It was not one or two single kerbs, it was quite an extent, they would all have had to be filed off, and with very hard concrete that would not have been possible," the FIA official explained.

"On that basis, the next thing we got was to actually get the cars to stay a bit further away from the kerbs, which is what we’ve done by changing the white line and so on," Tombasiz concluded.

Pirelli motorsport boss Mario Isola was asked if the tyres were going to fail, he said: "No . The first action is to proceed in order not to run too much over the kerbs. After that we will inform FIA of our finding and recommendations.

"This circuit is quite new. We did not get a chance to inspect yet. The time the drivers spend on the curves and the speed with over 270 k in the corners. This is creating the problem," Isola maintained.

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Reporting by Alan Baldwin, Additional reporting by GrandPrix247

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