27/05/2021
NEWS STORY
Mercedes chief strategist, James Vowles has revealed that the wheel nut issue that caused Valtteri Bottas' retirement in Monaco was due to the wheel gun being applied at the wrong angle.
Just one lap after world champion Lewis Hamilton pitted following a strategic call that was to prove disastrously wrong, teammate Valtteri Bottas headed into the Monaco pitlane.
Over the years, though never the quickest in terms of pit stops, Mercedes has been among the best, its double-stacking of its drivers at some events almost legendary.
However, as Bottas waited... and waited... and waited for the all-clear it was obvious that something was wrong, very wrong with his right-front wheel.
"Sitting in the car at the pit stop, I knew it was a slow one," the Finn subsequently told reporters, "and I was calculating Sainz getting past, then Norris, and when it got to thirty seconds, I couldn't believe it.
"It was a big mistake by us, as a team, to learn from," he continued. "If it is human error or a technical issue, it doesn't matter, we need to find the solution.
"If it's a human error, we need to support the guy who did it, but we need to learn from that, that's the main thing in my mind. And, at the same time, I'm super-disappointed."
In Mercedes latest video debrief, chief strategist, James Vowles explains the cause of the issue.
"The gun is an incredibly powerful gun," he explains, "such that you can actually see the mechanics having to restrain themselves holding themselves to the ground otherwise they get rotated with it at the same time.
"It's an impact force and what happens is the nut typically loosens in four or five impacts against it... a hammering action.
"Now, what happened is we came on slightly angled," he admits, "so when the socket was now connected to the nut, it slightly angled relative to it and as a result of that, now instead of distributing the load across all of the nut, it was across a small section and that tore the metal clean off and in fact, all of the metal was now removed from the nut.
"As a result of that, the nut was in place and we were unable to remove it."
Indeed, the team was unable to remove the wheel until it got the car back to itts Brackley HQ.
"Clearly, it's a circumstance that cost Valtteri dearly and cost the team dearly," admits Vowles, "and one that we are going to put steps in place to mitigate."
On Thursday, Mercedes issued a brief video revealing that the errant wheel nut had finally been removed.
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