SILVERSTONE -- Pirelli believes the tyre failures on the two Ferraris at the British Grand Prix were different in nature, but has stressed it will not have full details until it completes a full investigation in the coming days.
Even though the failures happened within a lap of each other, both affected the front left tyre and only occurred on the Ferraris, the initial investigation of the tyres points to two different causes. A full investigation is ongoing, but the initial analysis after the race showed the carcass of Raikkonen's tyre remained intact whereas Vettel's tyre was completely deflated and destroyed.
"We are obviously investigating the tyres as usual but more deeply because of what happened," Pirelli racing manager Mario Isola. "We believe, although it has to be proven, that the mode of failure of the two tyres is different, so we need to investigate.
"What we can exclude is that we had any carcass failure on Kimi's tyre because the tyre was still inflated. There is a part of the tyre that is damaged and we will investigate deeply on all the tyre, not just this tyre.
"Sebastian had a different issue with a loss of air, so we have to understand and we will provide a report. We are working together with the teams, because the data from the teams is an important part of the investigation and it's in the interest of everybody to better understand what happened."
Isola was not willing to rule anything out until a full investigation had been completed and said it would not be fair to jump to the conclusion that Ferrari simply ran the tyre beyond its wear life.
"I am saying we are investigating 360 degrees," he said. "So I am not excluding anything and to be sure that we come to the correct conclusion we need to be with an open mind and consider everything. It is too easy to say it is wear and close the investigation, but this is not professional from our side. We need to be sure that we find the right ... maybe it's a puncture."
Pirelli expects its investigation to be completed in the next few days after the teams' data has been analysed and the tyres have been returned to Milan.