Mercedes chief James Vowles has released details of the impact of Lewis Hamilton’s crash in F1 Belgian GP and how it affected the car.
In F1 Belgian GP post-race debrief, Mercedes’ chief strategist Vowles has opened up with technical details of the Lap 1 crash involving Hamilton and Alpine’s Fernando Alonso. He notes that the impact of the incident was recorded at 45 G.
But he added that Hamilton is fine and will be ready by Zandvoort. “It was a large, large impact,” said Vowles. “It was measured at 45 G on the SDR recorder in the car which is very big on a vertical load. He will be okay, he will be back in Zandvoort fighting I think primarily for him he is frustrated, frustrated that he had a very fast race car, and a podium was possible but he, like all of us, are here to fight and continue moving forward.”
Regarding the car, Vowles said the damage was more on the coolant side as they are to look into the parts more carefully to get the car ready for Zandvoort. “There is enough photos floating around the internet to show just how high the car was and how it landed and the impact was large,” he said.
“What we noticed almost immediately after the impact on the ground was a loss of coolant. You can actually see on the onboard of Alonso that coolant really just flying out towards him and then you started to see temperatures rise fairly quickly and that was the primary reason for stopping him on track.
“It will now take a few days to review all the components, clearly there is going to be overloads to the suspension components and gearboxes and we need to make sure to understand the full extent of what’s required before Zandvoort.”
Here’s what Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso stated