Racing Point talks about DNS for Nico Hulkenberg as Daniil Kvyat reviews video to see he wasn’t to be blamed while Kimi Raikkonen ‘s front wing failure is being investigated.
Racing Point team principal Otmar Szafnauer has detailed on the cause for Hulkenberg ‘Did Not Start’ as the German fairytale return in F1 British GP was stopped due to a bolt issue in the clutch system, which it takes from Mercedes.
The RP20 car was not starting up when they fired it up to head to the gird and soon it was clear that Hulkenberg wouldn’t be able to compete in F1 British GP. Post-race, Szafnauer explained the issue which is being investigated further.
“Hulkenberg ‘s car first and foremost, it looks like a bolt sheared within the clutch-housing and that bolt got caught and therefore wouldn’t allow the internal combustion engine to turn over,” said Szafnauer to media including Racefans.net, Motorsport Network, Reuters and more.
“So where the bolt fell off, it got jammed and we couldn’t turn the engine over. I think it’s a bit early to understand why, but it did shear off so it could be a material issue, it could be an over-torque issue, I don’t know. I’m sure all of those bolts are torqued to a certain specification, say the torque ratio isn’t set right and you over-torque it, it could shear it.
“It could be a material issue in manufacturing, but until you look into all of those things – was the bolt brittle for example, I don’t know – so we’ll have to understand the root cause and make sure we fix it. And it’s not a Racing Point part, that’s a part we get from MGP.”
Hulkenberg was naturally disappointed as he now hopes to race this weekend while the confusion on Sergio Perez’s availability remains. It will depend on days of quarantine and also him testing negative. With Lance Stroll, though, Racing Point only managed ninth despite the pace shown on Friday, Szafnauer felt safety car ruined the startegy.
But team is still looking into why they were slow. “We’re looking into why race pace was so bad, it could be a combination of both car aerodynamic set-up and things we could have done differently as well as the tyre we went to,” said Szafnauer.
“We never really got to use the advantage we had on qualifying on the option tyre not the quali tyre due to the safety car, everybody came in and then went to the prime tyre, so we’re still investigating. And Lance if you remember, lost out at the start because the option tyre is better at the start, you just get better grip.
“So we do a good job to get into Q3 on the option, we lose out at the start and then we can never regain that because of the safety car. And that kind of stuff you can never predict.” The loss for Racing Point was a gain for Renault and McLaren.
Sneaking in was AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly but his teammate Kvyat had a high-speed crash at Maggots, which he first took blame for as he said he was working on different switches on the steering which distracted him as he rammed onto the tyre barriers.
Sky Sports commentator Martin Brundle immediately thought it to be a tyre issue, which is what Kvyat and AlphaTauri could see upon review. It is not clear what happened exactly as they are looking into the data but initial data suggests a rear tyre puncture.
“I still don’t understand what happened, I was changing a lot of switches on the steering wheel and got distracted,” said Kvyat, just after the incident. “The red kerb just spun the car around completely, I didn’t expect that.
“But I wasn’t looking really on the track at that moment, we were having some issues on the car and I had to change a lot of parameters on the screen and it was very, very distracting.” However, post-race, he could assess it in a better way.
“I thought it was my fault, as at first I always tend to blame myself, but after reviewing the video we saw that something happened out of my control, so we will need to check all the data to understand what exactly caused the failure,” said Kvyat.
The final straw in F1 British GP was the front wing failure of Raikkonen. The Finn had a terrible run as he consistently complained of rear tyre issues. His pit stop wasn’t smooth either and eventually, his front wing detached in the closing stages.
The cause of the issue is being investigating but the debris on track is what being connected to the tyre failures for Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Carlos Sainz. Several others had cuts on their tyres too, which Pirelli is investigating.
“At the beginning of the race I thought we would have a chance to fight, but after the stops our pace was not enough to keep up with the others,” said Raikkonen. “We’ll need to see how to improve our performance. In the final laps, I had a front wing failure, but that made no difference in the end. I am not sure what happened, we’ll need to look into that.”
Here’s the video link of Daniil Kvyat crash: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2020/8/Great_Britain_2020__Kvyat_in_huge_crash_at_Silverstone.html
Here’s video of Kimi Raikkonen front wing failure: https://www.formula1.com/en/video/2020/8/Great_Britain_2020__Raikkonen_s_front_wing_breaks_.html
Here’s all about the tyre dramas in British GP
Here’s the report for the F1 British GP
Here’s Renault’s protest against Racing Point
Here’s environmental protesters at Silverstone
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