Hamilton brands Monza tyre pressure changes a 'disaster'

Lewis Hamilton believes that raising tyre pressures on safety ngrounds in the wake of the accidents at Spa-Francorchamps could be 'a disaster' for F1 in Italy this weekend.

Craig Llewellyn_1

03 Sep 2015

UPDATE: Pressures since revised slight to 4psi more at the front and 3psi more at the rear.

Lewis Hamilton has come out in opposition to plans to mandate tyre pressure changes ahead of this weekend's Italian Grand Prix, labelling them 'a disaster'.

The move, instigated by Pirelli in wake of the tyre failures that befell Sebastian Vettel and Hamilton's Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg over the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, would be introduced for all cars at Monza but Hamilton insists that he has no problem with the inflation rates remaining the same as before. Pirelli's initial findings blamed the combination of overuse of the tyres on Vettel's Ferrari and the amount of debris on the Spa circuit as the reasons for the German's failure two laps from the chequered flag, and teams will now be advised to run as much as 5psi more at the Italian Grand Prix.

"In terms of putting the pressures up, I don't believe that it is the right way - but then they might not do it anyways," Hamilton suggested on the eve of Friday practice, "I don't really have an answer to the explanation, but I feel comfortable coming here and running what we had before."

Hamilton is particularly concerned that the new settings will not have been tried on track ahead of Friday's first 90-minute practice session at a circuit known more for its high speeds than anything else.

"I don't think any of us has tried 5psi more in these tyres because they're not designed to have 5psi more - we work in a range and it's the optimum range," the reigning world champion commented, "We'll be moving out of the optimum range of the tyre and using a different part of the tyre, which means there'll be more wear and less grip - it's going to be a disaster!"

Veteran Felipe Massa is also unconvinced, but admits that he happy to see Pirelli doing something in response to Spa.

"The only thing we want is to be safe and not having this problem happen," the Williams driver explained, "[We want] to understand 100 per cent why it happened and change whatever needs to be changed to give us the most safe tyres and the most safe opportunity to race.

"I don't know what they will change from [Spa] to here but, if they change something, maybe with the tyre pressures and everything, you need to understand that they understand what happened or not."