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[What's Burning?]

My advanced race prediction system says Webber is not going to have a good time.

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Your predictor is broken... that's Vettel's car.

[CookinFlat6]

RBR intend to swap the cars around before the race as Seb scratched his bodywork a little with the tyre failure

[Jabberwocky]

Yep. It was the race before that was webber. (It was in the rain and was even worse)

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[geetface9]

ah I hope not!!

[LewEngBridewell]

Just watched 2000 Spa GP on skyF1 classic races..... absolutely amazing...... Those where the days!

Suzuka 2005 was better

[Hammer278]

Apparently there were two right rear tyre failures, Vettel and Alonso. The drivers aren't happy. Webber has said .....we want answers and debris isn't one of them. Sutil has said he wants a signature from the FIA saying there will be no tyre issues, otherwise he won't race.

Can you blame them? Fu**ing Pirelli tyres which can't even sustain some debris/curbing and getting flats with less than 20 laps of running, I'd be pretty concerned myself. At least these guys got these punctures in Practice, what if we see another 4-5 blow outs in the race from WDC contenders, Pirelli will call that "debris" again?

Ridiculous to blame it on debris, building tyres which lose grip is one thing, but tyres which can get flats so easily due to normal external circumstances such as track characteristics is really pushing the envelope. Bloody Pirelli tyres could seriously screw with the Championships since drivers will be practically gambling and hoping their tyres don't get affected and also gambling with their lives, this is a high speed circuit.

[racechick]

Well there was one blow out in practice at Silverstone I think, Perez in practice 3. And what 5 or so in the race? So far at Spa there have been two just on Friday. It doesn't bode well. I think the drivers have every reason to be concerned, for their safety and for their race chances.

[CookinFlat6]

The facts that both were the same rear tyre plus Pirellis immediate talk of debris gives a sense of deja vu at best

and then a 'uh uh, we are gonna need a shipload more tyres this weekend'

eventually giving way to 'I wonder when the postponed Spa race will be held'

[spankyham]

Remind me again of why we had to change the tires to take away Lotus and Ferrari's advantage?

[Hammer278]

Remind me again of why we had to change the tires to take away Lotus and Ferrari's advantage?

To get more durable tyres. Clearly it's not working as planned is it.

[CookinFlat6]

Remind me again of why we had to change the tires to take away Lotus and Ferrari's advantage?

[spankyham]

Remind me again of why we had to change the tires to take away Lotus and Ferrari's advantage?

.... Clearly it's not working as planned is it.

I guess that depends on what the plan was.

[racechick]

The plan to not make wider tyres for next years new engines is already looking a bit stupid.

[Nin-Chin]

Grosjean had good long run pace compared to Vettel,matching his times,could he be a danger?

Meanwhile:

Formula 1 officials believe they have found the cause of the tyre failures at the Belgian Grand Prix on Friday that had caused the drivers concern.
Race officials found a piece of heavy metal in the kerbs at Turn 13, just before the point where Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso had punctures.
The drivers had asked for an explanation of the failures because of a series of tyre problems this season.
Red Bull's Mark Webber said the drivers would accept the reason given.
Ferrari development driver Pedro De La Rosa, the chairman of the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, said he was "very happy" that Pirelli and governing body the FIA had found what appeared to be the reason for the failures.
"We only asked to know what it was," he told BBC Sport. "If it had been the first time we'd seen it, we would have been relaxed but after all the problems this year we were definitely concerned."
Pirelli changed the design of the tyres following a series of failures during the British Grand Prix.
The new tyres are of a more robust construction and were designed with the extreme demands of Belgium's Spa-Francorchamps track in mind.
Over a controversial few days following the British race, the grand prix drivers' association threatened to boycott the subsequent German Grand Prix if there were any further problems.
The failures on Vettel's and Alonso's cars happened in the same area of the track, between Turns 13 and 14, the Fagnes and Stavelot corners.
Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery and FIA race director Charlie Whiting went out on to the track on Friday to investigate what might have happened after Hembery said initial indications were the tyres had been punctured by some debris.
They found a piece of tungsten in the kerbs on the exit of the Fagnes left-hander, otherwise known as Turn 13.
The right rear tyre of the cars would run over this kerb as they exited that corner, which immediately precedes the Stavelot and Paul Frere corners where the failures on the cars of Alonso and Vettel were discovered.
The piece of metal was exactly the same size as the hole that was punctured in Alonso's tyre and a similar diameter to the width of the longitudinal cut around part of the circumference of Vettel's tyre.

[Hammer278]

Lol "kerb" issue....so now practice sessions are also used to find 'weak points' on various circuits in the calendar. I wonder how long that piece of tungsten has been part of the Spa layout.