Pirelli has promised a thorough and immediate investigation into today's incidents at Silverstone, though it rules out a problem with its new bonding process.

Caught in the full glare of the global media, Pirelli's season went from bad to worse today as a series of high profile failures not only robbed local hero Lewis Hamilton of a possible win but also threatened to have the race stopped.

Speaking in the wake of the race and ahead of a special meeting of the FIA's Sporting Working Group, which it has been ordered to attend, Pirelli Motorsport boss Paul Hembery said: "There have obviously been some issues with rear-left tyre failures which we have not seen before. We are taking the situation very seriously and we are currently investigating all tyres to determine the cause as soon as possible, ahead of the next Grand Prix in Germany.

"At the moment, we can’t really say much more until we have fully investigated and analysed all of these incidents, which is our top priority. However, we can exclude that the new bonding process, which we introduced at this race, is at cause for the tyre failures we have seen today.

"There might be some aspect to this circuit that impacts specifically on the latest version of our 2013 specification tyres," he admitted, "but at this point we do not want to speculate but will now put together all the evidence to find out what happened and then take appropriate next steps should these be required."

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