2021 AMG Mercedes F1 Team

[holeindalip]

"And this is what our nuts look like."
Thanks for the insights, James.


No clues in the video though regarding what Hamilton has been complaining about regarding setup and poor performance from the team.

James is saying the setups were pretty much the same for both cars and the issue was "extracting the performance" in qualifying. Which points to the driver being the issue as Bottas' P3 showed as well.

Same for the race. James is saying that the undercut should have theoretically worked and the issue was only in getting the tires up to temperature and basically being marginally too slow. As the pit stop time was top level as well, this doesnt sound like a mistake from the team to me.

If they had issues warming the tires up why on earth would you try an undercut, the over cut was the only true solution to tire warmup or you’ll be to slow on your outlaps to make the ground up….

[Hoffman900]

Especially when they didn’t even have reliable data on the hards and had to “interpolate” from 2019 data. I will say, to be within .2 on interpolated data is pretty outstanding, but it was .2 the wrong way.

[e30ernest]

Has this been posted?



If yes, then apologies.

[Morteza]

[Hoffman900]

Looks like they used the grinder in the valleys to weaken it and let it release pressure, so they could spin it off.

[Big Tea]

Option one, where is that 30 inch stilsons?. option 2 tack a bar onto it

[pursue_one's]

Toto Wolff announced that the design of the wheel nut would be revised as quickly as possible to prevent a repeat of the incident.
But Front Upright Assembly (Excluding Axles, bearings, nuts and retention system) is need to spend tokens.

[simieski]

As pre race the wheels are fitted with a torque wrench, I would guess the failure mode was galling as opposed to over torque or cross threading. Could the fix be as simple as application of an anti seize compound such as neverseez NSBT-8N or Molykote D321R?

Another step to mitigate this kind of race ending failure would be to have a spare gun with something similar to an alloy wheel locking nut remover (socket with left hand thread cut into it to bite into the rounded nut).

[PhillipM]

The nuts already have platings and coatings.

[Jolle]

I can imagine when your wheel gun is spinning before you have a good grip of the nut, it's grinded down like this in a heartbeat.

Mercedes have been lacking in pitstop speed over RedBull the last few seasons, this might just be because they tried to speed things up a little. The red bull wheelgun operators almost have the nut loose before the car even stops...

[El Scorchio]

I can imagine when your wheel gun is spinning before you have a good grip of the nut, it's grinded down like this in a heartbeat.

Mercedes have been lacking in pitstop speed over RedBull the last few seasons, this might just be because they tried to speed things up a little. The red bull wheelgun operators almost have the nut loose before the car even stops...

The RBR guys are seriously impressive. Everyone else needs to step their game up. I wonder if it’s equipment related at all or if they are just plain better? Is part of the procedure to each down a can of a certain energy drink 5 mins before the cars come in?

But seriously, Mercedes (and the rest) need to look at getting on a par with them as it’s a substantial margin in F1 terms.

[Jolle]

I can imagine when your wheel gun is spinning before you have a good grip of the nut, it's grinded down like this in a heartbeat.

Mercedes have been lacking in pitstop speed over RedBull the last few seasons, this might just be because they tried to speed things up a little. The red bull wheelgun operators almost have the nut loose before the car even stops...

The RBR guys are seriously impressive. Everyone else needs to step their game up. I wonder if it’s equipment related at all or if they are just plain better? Is part of the procedure to each down a can of a certain energy drink 5 mins before the cars come in?

But seriously, Mercedes (and the rest) need to look at getting on a par with them as it’s a substantial margin in F1 terms.

I think it's all about coordinating and training. If, for instance, RedBull have put it in their procedure that the wheelgun should be on the nut 30cm before the car comes to a dead stop, you can train on that and get it right every time. If a rival team, without that specific instruction just goes ahead and tries to cut corners, you get mistakes like these.

[adrianjordan]

Is part of the procedure to each down a can of a certain energy drink 5 mins before the cars come in?

It is, but here's the twist....said energy drink is Monster

[dans79]

Here's an interesting video, it shows that home base was the one that was calling for the to stop in Barcelona!

I think this might be a new development/feature for FOM/Liberty because I don't remember hearing communications between home base and the pit wall before!

[F1Krof]

So by the looks of it, a couple of definite patterns emerging:
1) Either no tokens were spent or we have no clue where
2) Struggling with tyre temperature, which means they are super smooth on tyre consumption which will bode well for high energy tracks but suffer on tracks with less energy.
3) Bottas' luck and performance on a similar trend.