Nico Rosberg was the first to suffer a terrifying accident during free practice on Friday when his rear-right failed at high speed and pitched him towards the barriers, his car stopping just short of impact.
Equally serious was the race day failure undoing the good work of Sebastian Vettel, who was robbed of his podium place behind the two ultra-dominant Mercedes cars when his rear-right also gave way, this time at the exit of the famous Eau Rouge corner.
The German told the BBC in an expletive-laden interview after the race that Pirelli’s rubber wasn’t up to scratch.
“Things like that are not allowed to happen, full stop,” he fumed. “If it happened 200 metres earlier, I’m not standing here now, I’m doing 300 [kilometres per hour] stuck in Eau Rouge.”
“As I said, if this happens earlier, then I’m f****d. I don’t know what else needs to happen.”
Pirelli laid the blame for Vettel’s failure at the door of Ferrari for attempting to complete 28 laps on a single set of tyres, and made its stance clear in a short and sharp press release after the race.
“In November 2013, Pirelli requested that there should be rules to govern the maximum number of laps that can be driven on the same set of tyres, among other parameters to do with correct tyre usage,” it said in a statement. “This request was not accepted.
“The proposal put forward a maximum distance equivalent to 50 per cent of the grand prix distance for the prime tyre and 30 per cent for the option.
“These conditions, if applied today at Spa, would have limited the maximum number of laps on the medium compound to 22.”
With the Italian Grand Prix at the super-fast Monza circuit less than two weeks away and Pirelli already scheduled to bring softer tyres than usual, many heads will need to be smacked to find a workable solution to this latest source of tension.
Vettelʼs tyre failure opened the door to Lotus’ Romain Grosjean to take his first podium since the 2013 United States Grand Prix, with the added bonus of being a much needed boost for the ailing English team.
Lotus’s season has been a tale of financial woe, culminating in former reserve driver Charles Pic suing the team for lost testing time during 2014.
With the litigating parties unable to reach settlement before the race weekend, bailiffs were called in to keep Lotus’ owners honest – but speculation places the team weeks at best away from a humiliating collapse into administration.
Its only hope of salvation may be in the form of Renault, which is looking to re-enter the sport as a fully-fledged constructor by buying a team for the 2017 season – and picking up the pieces of a shattered business would be a significantly easier business proposition than negotiating a sale.
However, the deal between Renault and Lotus, rumoured to be close to completion, has apparently gone cold, with Force India team principal Vijay Mallya confirming he had discussions with Renault ambassador and multiple F1 champion Alain Prost over the weekend about his openness to the French brand acquiring a majority stake in the squad.
After almost a month of vacation, Formula One has hit the ground running, and if there’s one thing this sport knows how to do, it is open with a bang.
The Italian Grand Prix can’t come soon enough.