Little love is lost between Mercedes and Ferrari, but that hasn’t stopped Scuderia from helping their strong rivals at the Monaco Grand Prix.
Mercedes found itself in a right situation when, during his only planned pit stop, a wheel got stuck on Valtteri Bottas’ car and forced him out of the race.
As hard as the mechanics tried, the front right tire refused to move and the only option for the beleaguered Finn was to get out of the car and retreat from a Grand Prix in which he was a solid second behind Winner Max Verstappen drove.
And it wasn’t one of those issues that was quickly resolved when the pressure eased. Mercedes technical director James Allison announced that the interfering mother was so persistent that the wheel “had to be sanded down … back at the factory”.
That was despite the efforts of an unusual resource – Ferrari, apparently long after the race was over.
Motorbox quotes Mercedes F1 team boss and co-owner Toto Wolff as saying: “The weapon made the wheel nut completely round.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. There is nothing left of that. Valtteri told us he could see the metal shavings fly away.
“The tire is still in the car. Ferrari also helped us with heavy equipment. “
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We expect Mercedes to reveal more when they release their post-race debriefing information, but Allison has already provided an in-depth look at what happened at the botched pit stop.
“If we don’t bring the pit stop gun onto the nut completely clean, it can flake off the mother’s drive surfaces,” he explained.
“We call it the editing of the mother. It’s a bit like taking a Phillips screwdriver and not getting it straight into the cross of the screwdriver.
“Given the power of the gun, it can happen that you have no drive face and just take the mother to a place where there is nothing left to be grasped, and that is exactly what we had.”
Regarding the fact that the pit stop gun does not sit properly on the mother, Wolff said that Bottas was partly to blame – because he fell slightly below his markings.
“Valtteri stopped a little too early,” said Wolff, quoted by Auto Motor und Sport.
“That meant the mechanic had to put the impact wrench at an angle. The awkward angle damaged the wheel nut and we couldn’t bring it down. “
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