Sebastian Vettel started his weekend looking forward to challenging Mercedes again, yet he ended it with Pirelli being his major target. He suffered a dramatic blowout, similar to Nico Rosberg's just the Friday before, but why do Pirelli seem so unwilling to directly adress the situation?

What Is Wrong With Pirelli?

Put simply the teams, and drivers alike, both have no confidence in the current range of tyres available in Formula One. It all started to fall apart for the Italian manufacturer back at the 2013 British Grand Prix. Seven incidents of tyre failures were recorded during just that weekend as Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Esteban Gutierrez, Jean-Eric Vergne, Felipe Massa and Sergio Perez (twice) were the unlucky victims.

Rather than admitting a fault with their tyres, Pirelli instead claimed that the kerbs were too sharp. This claim was reputed by the British Racing Driver's Club who defended themselves by saying that the kerbs have been in place since 2009 and "have had thousands and thousands of cars go over these kerbs and they have been absolutely fine."

Ultimately the fault was found to be in Pirelli's tyre design. After the tyre supplier went away they came back claiming that they had solved their issues. It wouldn't last long however.

At the Belgian Grand Prix in 2013 there were another two tyre failures during Free Practice 2. This time Vettel and Alonso were the unfortunate drivers, Alonso attacked Pirelli as he said "the quality of the tyres is very on the limit" he then added "they will not do 5KM."

2014 wasn't much better for the Italian company as they couldn't even get through pre-season testing without a failure. This time Rosberg was the unsuspecting victim as he was sent into a dangerous and certainly hair-raising 200MPH spin, it was so dangerous that purely luck alone kept him safe.

The wet tyre for that year was particularly poor, Adrian Sutil called it "the worst I have driven." Jenson Button criticised the tyre, "they take away that grip it gave you." Hamilton meanwhile was more subtle and called them "not great."

2015 seemed to have improved until the Belgian Grand Prix this weekend. Both Vettel and Rosberg again were the drivers who were let down by their tyres. Rosberg lost his in free practice, following this a number of drivers, Alonso and Vettel among them complained in the Friday safety briefing.

Their complaints were soon becoming more significant as it only took until race day for another failure to take place as Vettel suffered one while at 200 MPH. He described the events as unacceptable.

Pirelli's Defense

Is there anyway Pirelli could possibly defend themselves? Is it even possible for a team receiving obscene amounts of money simply to make tyres to defend themselves for not even being able to fulfill their simplest of roles? Surely they have an excuse?

At the moment Paul Hembrey's default excuse appears to be that the teams are merely overrunning their tyres, or the drivers are comprimising the tyre's structural integrity by cutting corners so dramatically and hitting kerbs and edges. 

Pirelli claim that at the minute it's the FIA's problem. They released a statement late after the Belgian Grand Prix. It says that they requested a limit in the laws on the number of laps a driver can do on each compound during a race. They claim they should only drive a maximum of 50% of race distance on the prime tyre.

If enforced on Sunday Vettel would have had to change his tyres after 22 laps, instead his tyre failed on the 28th lap. However the Scuderia countered this claim after they were told the tyre could last 40 laps by Pirelli.

Should There Be A Change?

Yes, absolutely. However the change has to be that there will no longer be an enforced tyre supplier. There was far more focus on tyres for the teams when they not only had to choose when to change them but also who should provide their tyres in the first place.

At the moment the teams are in the unfortunate position where they don't like the Pirelli tyres yet are forced to continue to pay Pirelli as they simply cannot go anywhere else. Rightfully then some teams don't want to keep paying them and some, Lotus, simply cant.

Michelin deserve the chance to show that they can make tyres for the highest level and frankly Pirelli need the competition simply to ensure they don't relax. Because until Pirelli are forced to make more reliable and safer tyres one of these failures will eventually result in a serious incident.