Formula One

Tyre maker Pirelli is one of the partners in the FIA Formula 1 World Championship film to be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman in collaboration with F1 Group and seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton.

David Coulthard, himself a 13-time Grand Prix winner, has hit out at the current generation of Formula One tyres, which are supplied by Pirelli. Speaking in an interview with RaceFans.net, Coulthard said Pirelli-era tyres resulted in boring races: “This whole Pirelli era is just confusing to me and boring to me to have to talk about, and super-boring for me to have to listen to the drivers going ‘I was trying to avoid pushing too hard on the tyres’.”

Pirelli is title sponsor of this weekend’s F1 racing in Imola, and as such was tasked with supplying the race trophies for the Gran Premio del Made in Italy e dell’Emilia Romagna. The tyre maker turned to artist Alice Ronchi to supply the creativity, selecting her for this project on the back of prior collaboration with Pirelli HangarBicocca, the non-profit foundation dedicated to the production and promotion of contemporary art set up within a converted warehouse in Milan in 2004.

Pirelli is investigating the reasons for the tyre failures at this weekend’s British Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton limped his Mercedes to the chequered flag at Silverstone on 2 August race after his front-left P Zero White deflated on the last lap. His team-mate Valtteri Bottas and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz both had tyres fail in the final stages too. Mario Isola, who is Pirelli’s head of F1 tyres, explained that the likely causes of their failure were that they wer “extremely well-used”, while Hamilton also spoke of the presence of debris on the track from two accidents early in the race.

The Formula 1 teams have delivered a firm "no thanks" to exclusive tyre supplier Pirelli. They unanimously rejected Pirelli’s 2020 tyre specification in an FIA vote today. As a result, F1 will continue to use the 2019 tyres next season.

Tyres have been made into many things over the years. However, creating luxury bracelets from a tyre used by Ayrton Senna during the 1993 F1 Grand Prix race at Donington Park is a new one.