Mercedes has released a video in which the stuck right front wheel was removed from Valtteri Bottas’ Formula 1 car after the Finn’s resignation in Monaco. He finally managed to do this two days after the race.
The team posted a short video clip Tuesday morning shortly after the vans returned, showing a mechanic working on the car at the Brackley factory.
The bike got stuck after Bottas pitted during the race and the nut was pulled off the air pistol, making it impossible to remove.
Instead of continuing to work on the car on Sunday evening, the team decided to save the job for the return to the UK.
In an earlier video, Mercedes chief strategy officer James Vowles noted that problems at the stops were not uncommon given the fine margins involved.
“The whole process takes a second and a half, that’s it,” Vowles said. “It’s the process of removing a nut, changing a wheel, and putting the new nut back in.”
“As a result, as you can safely tell, the failure rate is very low and if the slightest problem occurs it slows down the stop, or possibly in an absolutely catastrophic event.”
Vowels stated that the Monaco problem occurred because the wheel gun was presented at a slight angle and that the problem would be fixed for future races.
“Our nuts are what we call captive. They are held in the wheel and in the tire. If the wheel loosens, the nut is part of it,” he noted.
“This mother has to hold a wheel on the car so that it can withstand 5 g forces when braking and also sideways.
“There’s a tremendous force going through the axle and the nut, and it’s clear that we can never loosen it. So the gun is an incredibly powerful weapon, so you can actually see the mechanics being held back to hold on to the ground, otherwise they will be rotated at the same time.
“Well, what happened is that we are angled slightly. Now when the jack was connected to the mother it was slightly angled relative to it, and as a result, it no longer shared the load over the entire mother of the it was a small section that tore off the metal and actually removed all of the metal from the mother.
“As a result, the mother was in place and we couldn’t remove her.
“It is clearly something that cost Valtteri dearly and the team dearly and which we will take to remedy the situation.”
Also read:
According to Vokalen, Mercedes first tried to remove the wheel in its Monaco garage but then decided to wait for the car to be brought back to Brackley so it could use special equipment and investigate the problem.
“Ultimately, we decided that we would need some pretty heavy equipment and specialized equipment to remove this nut, and that would be better here at the factory,” he added.
“What’s more, it gives us a chance to do an autopsy to really understand how this nut was born and to gather some clues so we can do a better job in the future.”
The post Mercedes F1 shows video of Bottas wheel removal first appeared on monter-une-startup.
