Why F1 only has itself to blame for the British GP tyre fiasco but now must act decisively

Sunday's British Grand Prix turned out to be a great race for all the wrong reasons.

The teams themselves are to partly to blame for what we saw on Sunday and from Pirelli's perspective there are mitigating circumstances - on the one hand, they've been asked to spice up the racing, and on the other they've been hindered by a ban on in-season testing and the lack of access to a representative car. But Pirelli are not, at present, doing a good enough job and the sight of tyres exploding at 180mph was totally unacceptable. There are too many excuses and not enough fixes. The sight of Kimi Raikkonen's car and crash helmet being hit by debris as he followed Jean-Eric Vergne's Toro Rosso underlined just how dangerous the tyre blowouts were. And it's not just the lives of drivers being put at risk when large chunks of rubber are flying around but the marshals and even the public too. The FIA has significant letters from the drivers expressing their concerns and after Sunday they could impose a directive on the teams to run with different geometries on their cars, particularly camber angle, and with increased tyre pressure to alleviate the risk of more blow-outs. The Nurburgring itself will also be less taxing on the tyres than Silverstone. The likes of Spa and Suzuka will put a huge load on the Pirellis and some team bosses told me that returning to the 2012-spec tyres seems the best solution for a longer term fix this season. After the Nurburgring there's a three-week gap in the calendar before Hungary - a lengthy break by today's standards - F1 must use this window. I was intrigued also about the loud cheers all around the circuit when Sebastian Vettel retired. Remember this happened after Lewis was out of the lead so it wasn't just patriotic. I asked the same fans on pit straight why this was so, and a very clear answer came back: Malaysia Multi-21. MB