Wheel gun fault caused Norris’s slow pit stop

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In the round-up: McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl says a wheel gun problem spoiled Lando Norris’s pit stop during the Hungarian Grand Prix.

What they say

Unfortunately we had an issue with the left-rear wheel gun which caused the delay in the tyre change. In the end that lost him two positions, plus it got Bottas clear air next to him that in the race and Bottas got him as well.

So I’m sorry from our side to Lando that he was unlucky. In terms of driving he pulled off also a great performance today. Had a good start as well. But these things happen in racing.

The good thing is now that we can score these 12 points. It was what you need just before such a break in terms of boost again for the entire team. It’s a good time now to switch off the next two weeks and recharge our batteries and then come back and go into full push for the second half of the season.

Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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Comment of the day

Top statting from @Jelle-van-der-Meer:

Currently it has been 49 races since there was a new Grand Prix winner (first win of a driver) – this is the longest drought (in number of races) ever. The last new Grand Prix winner was Valtteri Bottas in Russia 2017.

The previous record was 48 races between Mark Webber winning his first race in Germany 2009 and Nico Rosberg winning his 1st race in China 2012.

If you look at days instead of races the record is not yet broken as today there are more races per year than in previous decades. In days the current streak is ranked only fifth with 854 days – it will break the record if there is no new grand prix winner this season by March 15th 2020 it will than be 1,050 days (58 races). Below is the top four longest droughts in days between new grand prix winners.

#1 = 1,043 days (44 races) from Alessandro Nannini win in Japan 1989 to Michael Schumacher win in Belgium 1992
#2 = 1,008 days (48 races) from Mark Webber win in Germany 2009 to Nico Rosberg win in China 2012
#3 = 980 days (38 races) from Gerhard Berger win in Mexico 1986 to Thierry Boutsen win in Canada 1989
#4 = 939 days (32 races) from Michele Alboreto win in USA 1982 to Ayrton Senna win in Portugal 1985

@Jelle-van-der-Meer

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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22 comments on “Wheel gun fault caused Norris’s slow pit stop”

  1. COTD 👏

  2. Nice COTD, good to see such a stat-filled one selected! @Jelle-van-der-Meer

  3. Nice stats there in the COTD. Indeed good to see such a stat-filled post selected for the COTD of a round-up.

  4. Judging by Brundle’s comments and Dieter’s last Paddock Diary, it seems that the 2021 regulations are starting to get a lot of pushback, particularly from Technical Directors who seem to have been analysing what some of these “cost saving” measures will actually cost in terms of redeveloping chassis to accommodate “standard parts”.

    Of course the new aero will be expensive as well as pretty much all of their modelling tools etc will have to be thrown out and all teams will need to start fresh. That may not necessarily be hard for one of the top teams that is spending their full budget cap, but the fact is that a fair number of teams are well below the cap and the new equity sharing deal really doesn’t do much to address that.

    In total this doesn’t really bode all that well for 2021, or even getting the proposed regulations over the line in October without significant watering down (as has usually been the case). Hopefully Liberty will grow some and deliver the new Reg proposals as a “take it or leave it” but at this stage its not looking good.

    Hopefully discarding the fallacy of “standard parts” will be enough to get the aero changes through.

    1. Hopefully discarding the fallacy of “standard parts” will be enough to get the aero changes through.

      @dbradock – Brawn is a canny operator, and maybe this is his intent – capitulate on standard parts to push through significant aero revisions.

      1. Redesigns are always costly initially and then over time the costs get deferred. This happened ahead of 2014, and this time around at least they are staying with the same Pu. I doubt the teams will be able to resist so much that the cars won’t still be greatly less clean air dependent. Brundle cites ‘key teams’ which to me means the top ‘have’ teams, what a shock, and I can envision them right now saying how exciting the last few races have been and therefore why change (and disrupt their runs) knowing full well that the bigger picture needs to include getting rid of drs and the reasons drs exists. I’m not worried by ‘key teams’ resistance as I highly doubt Brawn is just going to scrap the new thinking…the new philosophy. There might be resistance on some finer details, but the overall concept is I’m sure going ahead. It has to. It can’t continue to be a two team or two driver Championship ad infinitum, with processions masked by fake drs passes.

  5. Jelle van der Meer (@)
    6th August 2019, 8:13

    Thanks Keith for the COTD – I am a long time fan of the Stats article after each race :-)

    1. @jelle-van-der-meer – meet @jerejj – now there’s two of you whose supplementary stats I look for.

      1. @phylyp Shame we don’t hear much from @andae23 anymore. I used to look out for his/her stats too!

        1. @ninjenius Glad you liked them :) I don’t really have time or motivation to look around for stats after the races anymore sadly :(

  6. Here is an idea. If bottas gets replaced by ocon then what about bottas going to red bull to replace gasly? Say whatever you want about either of the drivers but I can’t imagine any kind of alternate universe where gasly keeps his seat after this season. I think it is also fair to say valtteri has had two races now where his results look much much worse than his actual performance.

    1. @socksolid – that’s an interesting thought. In terms of temperament he’d be a perfect mate to Max, without being a threat to the status quo. I think the one thing that might give RBR pause is that Bottas is a little finicky in car setup – he seems to do better when the car is lighter on fuel, and often is seen to struggle at the start of the race (not in absolute terms but, say, in comparison to his teammate). In that respect, the big unknown will be how will RBR’s car philosophy work to/against him.

      In my eyes, the Hulk rumours seems a likelier chance, and his comments in y’day’s article about Renault needing a hard look seems like there is a changing dynamic there. Also, Christian would love to rub Cyril’s nose in the fact that he’s poached a Renault driver at a far cheaper price than the reverse (and is likely to deliver better results thanks to the car).

      1. Also, Christian would love to rub Cyril’s nose in the fact that he’s poached a Renault driver at a far cheaper price than the reverse (and is likely to deliver better results thanks to the car).

        Oh, I can definitely see it @phylyp. Horner bragging for ages that Hulk is doing better in the RB than in the Renault. And it would be a reminder from them to Ricciardo whose results are missing now to the Austrian team.

      2. Bottas is a little finicky in car setup

        I don’t think that has anything to do with setups or driving styles or car preferences. The true sign of first class racer is his race pace and bottas simply is not as fast on race day as hamilton most of the time. Bottas is very quick but not quite there. The difference could be something as small as tenth per lap but even that after 50 laps that is 5 seconds. Bottas can match hamilton occasionally and sometimes be faster but hamilton usually has that little edge. If you put hamilton and bottas one after another you either have situation where hamilton slowly pulls away on the front or constantly chases bottas down. Or they hold positions because of the dirty and pirellis make anything else not possible. Unless there is difference in tires you don’t really see bottas hounding down hamilton like we saw in silverstone for example with hamilton constantly trying to get past bottas. Same is true about alonso and verstappen. Not the fastest on qualifying but when the race comes they can drive consistently to a very high limit without errors.

        Also I disagree with the idea that verstappen is necessarily a difficult team mate or that he requires something special to keep his status quo at red bull. Sure he is fast but I don’t hear any primadonna issues either. The issues at red bull are more about how poorly horner and the leaders at red bull manage their drivers. You always have helmut marko with his blatant favouritism and backstabbing and the horners with their feigned ignorance about the situation. It was first with vettel and now with verstappen that while both drivers in the team get equal equipment you always have a situation where you know the markos et all will always prefer if their favourite driver does better. When there is any kind of clash the unwanted driver always gets the blame and is left without support even if they are the innocent party (vettel/webber at turkey or verstappen/ricciardo at baku).

    2. @socksolid But unlikely to happen, though. Should Gasly be replaced for ‘next’ season then it’d most likely be Kvyat in the other RB-car rather than someone from outside the RB-camp, so not really a realistic option for him.

  7. That CotD was a breath of fresh air. Why can’t we have more of those?

  8. Who is Dan Milner, and who is he asking to eff off? And what has he done/tweeted of significance to warrant inclusion in the round-up?

    Also, Dan, comparing a car to a missile is not a good comparison – missiles blow up at the end (just like torpedoes, and look what that nickname did to Kvyat’s career trajectory). Jet/rocket – might be what you’re going for.

    1. … and that’s one of the things we could do without.

      1. That is, the twitter post, not your comment dealing with it, @phylyp

        1. No worries, I got what you were saying – as a literary follow-up to your earlier comment, and I agree :)

  9. Feel sorry for Norris and Albon, clearly outshining their respective team mates yet most haven’t noticed it.In Russel’s case he is going to lose to kubica but everyone knows reality.

  10. In addition to the CotD: There have only been 5 new winners this decade. Second lowest number was the 90s, with 10 new winners. This decade had an unprecedented stability in team-hierarchy, a very slow transfer-market with the most boring “silly seasons” ever, and the overbearing reliability of the cars and the lack of punishment for driver-mistakes does the rest to make this the age of predictability.
    To add to that, the one less predictable new winner in this decade (Pastor Maldonado) happened more than 7 years ago.

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