Max Verstappen had guessed it.
"Pirelli will say, as always, that there was part of another crash on the road," said the Red Bull driver when asked by the Sky reporter on Sunday evening in Baku.
Verstappen seemed to have coped with his accident five laps before the end of the race, not just physically.
Christoph Becker
Sports editor.
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He was well on his way to extending his lead in the World Championship by winning the Azerbaijan Grand Prix when the left rear tire lost pressure and shape on the start-and-finish straight. When the Dutchman was at the medical check-up, he learned that rival Lewis Hamilton had messed up the restart. Verstappen left the doc healthy, lively and as World Cup leader, in a rising mood and with the aforementioned premonition.
The end of the business trip was the beginning of the discussion: Why didn't the tire stop?
15 laps before Verstappen's crash, Canadian Lance Stroll's race in the Aston Martin had ended in the same, highly dangerous way: defective rear left tire, impact on the track boundary, without major physical consequences - also because, as in the case of Verstappens, the following traffic was not so tight that there were secondary accidents.
Mario Isola, race director of the monopoly Pirelli, who has been supplying Formula 1 since 2011, confirmed Verstappen's hunch subito.
So far, there are only indications, said the Italian, the tires were air freighted to Milan for analysis, and there should be a report by the next race weekend in Le Castellet in ten days.
But Isola thought she knew one thing very well: “It wasn't tire damage due to excessive wear.” His assumption: A piece of debris had been run over, and a cut was also found on the rear tire of the Mercedes from Hamilton.
The world champion, who finished the race in 14th place, was simply more lucky than the competition.
Isola put together a chain of circumstantial evidence: Other drivers had been on one set of tires longer, but without any problems, than Stroll and Verstappen, and around the old town of Baku, the right, not the left rear tire was more heavily used.
Somebody built ahead.
Pirelli came under fire last year when tire damage increased.
The manufacturer had stabilized the construction for the current season. Isola announced that the teams' data will be evaluated. Not too much usable should come from Verstappen's Red Bull team. Absolutely nothing was announced via telemetry, the world championship leader had very quickly let know. Formula 1 will play Black Peter for a few more days.