In Sunday’s Australian GP, for the third time in an equal variety of races, the Sauber F1 crew suffered one other pitstop blunder, one which price Valtteri Bottas dearly and that additionally resulted in a €5,000 high quality for the Swiss outfit.
Pitstop woes have develop into a recurrent theme on the Hinwil squad, with a wheelnut malfunction undermining Bottas’ efforts in Bahrain earlier this month after which once more in Saudi Arabia the place Zhou Guanyu was on the receiving finish of a disastrous glitch.
In Jeddah, Sauber crew consultant Alessandro Alunni Bravi mentioned the outfit meant to rapidly resolve its points and clear up its predicament which seemed to be linked to the crew’s {hardware} fairly than to its execution.
However regardless of Sauber implementing extra checks and revised procedures to make sure that every wheelnut is correctly secured, the underlying concern emerged as soon as once more in Melbourne and value Bottas one other disastrous 28-second cease.
Because the Finn’s automotive was being serviced by its crew, a wheelnut popped out of the gun and rolled into the quick lane and thus doubtlessly into the trail of different vehicles, which inevitably caught the eye of the FIA stewards.
The latter’s investigation concluded that Sauber had “misplaced management of a wheelnut throughout a pitstop inflicting a doubtlessly harmful situation within the pitlane through the race”.
A €5,000 high quality was duly imposed on the crew, however whereas Sauber racing director Xevi Pujolar lamented the slip-up he insisted that it had not been attributable to any modifications made by the crew since Jeddah.
©Sauber
“It should not have occurred, however we did not do any modification that’s inflicting that,” he mentioned, quoted by Motorsport.com.
“What we noticed within the free follow and pitstop follow we had been fairly assured that truly at the moment it needs to be OK.”
Whatever the causes for its issues, they’re costing Sauber dearly, in response to Pujolar.
“From the primary race, we discovered some points with pitstops, with the cross-thread,” he mentioned.
“It is one thing that we do not discover once we do free follow, and even through the winter, we did not discover an issue.
“However then each time we go right into a race state of affairs it turns into extra essential. We took some containment this week, some small modifications. It isn’t sturdy sufficient, and we had one pitstop concern.
“So long as we have now this concern, it turns into very tough for us. It isn’t the issue with the crew, the crew are doing every little thing accurately.
“We have an issue with the {hardware}, and we’d like simply to be sure that we have now acquired time to search out that resolution and the components and we’ll attempt to repair it for Suzuka.”
Preserve updated with all of the F1 information by way of Fb and Twitter
