Pirelli boss Paul Hembery has admitted his company’s tyres are “robbing” fans of a spectacle after many teams opted to save tyres for the Japanese Grand Prix rather than aim for grid position during qualifying.

With the softer tyres wearing badly on the abrasive Suzuka circuit, teams were forced to choose between going for grid position and potentially sacrificing points come race day or limiting their runs on Saturday in an attempt to keep tyres fresh for Sunday, meaning fans were denied the chance to see genuine racing.

Only six drivers of the final ten set a time in the qualifying shoot-out, while the likes of Force India and Torro Rosso sacrificed making it into Q3 by passing up the opportunity to set a second quick time in order to save sets of tyres for the race.

• Click here for the report from qualifying and drivers reaction

The likes of McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari did emerge for a second run in the final qualifying session amidst fears they would only do one run on previously used tyres, and Hembery believes his company must come up with a solution in order to avoid a similar spectacle next season.

“I think it’s up to us to work with the teams to come up with a solution,” said Hembery. “We are robbing the fans of a show. They paid good money to come here today.

“I’m not criticising the teams because I know why they’ve done it, because they are using the rules to obtain the best result, so it’s not a case of that. But I think we have to look at the wider picture and all of us work together to find a solution.

“It’s something we discussed with a few of the teams over the last few days and I hope that we can set up something in Korea and start working on some solutions. We are open to any suggestions from the teams. I think we all recognise that something needs to be done.”

The Pirelli boss recently put forward the idea of reintroducing a qualifying-only tyre in order to avoid the tactic of saving tyres in qualifying being used, although teams were cool on the idea.

“I think we need to get more tyres, find another solution, get qualifying tyres, force teams to use the Q2 tyres in Q3…. There’s a multitude of ideas that we can discuss.” He commented.

“They all have positives and negatives, of course. There’s never the perfect solution, but I think sitting on a table and being sensible there has to be a way of finding something that suits everyone.”

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