Sebastian Vettel says his crash during testing this morning was caused by a failure at the front-left of his car and the damage is making it difficult to identify what went wrong.
The Ferrari driver crashed at turn three when his SF90 abruptly went straight on during his 40th lap on this morning test.“We don’t know much more than everyone knows,” said Vettel. “Obviously inside the car I was going into turn three and I had a feeling there was an issue with the front-left corner.
“And then from there there wasn’t anything I could have done to avoid the impact. I wasn’t in control any more and went more or less straight into the barrier.”
Vettel described the impact with the wall as “quite strong”.
“I think the TecPro in the wall did their job, the car did its job,” he said. “Of course after the impact the car was very damaged so that’s what also makes it quite difficult to reconstruct what was going on before the impact.”
The damaged caused by the crash is making it harder for Ferrari to work out what caused the initial failure.
[smr0901]”We are flat-out trying to understand,” said Vettel. “Obviously it would be a lot easier if there was a lot of run-off and the car didn’t hit anything right after because now you can imagine due to the hit it’s sustained damage.
“So we have to be very careful in understanding exactly what is the problem and that’s what everybody is looking at here at the track but also in Maranello.”
Although the team covered more mileage than any of their rivals over the first five days, Vettel said the time lost due to the crash is still a setback.
“We covered a lot of mileage last week. But surely the plan is always to fulfil your programme so we had more laps on the board than 40 this morning. So for sure it’s not ideal and we’re losing some time but right now it’s important to understand what exactly happened.
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Robbie (@robbie)
27th February 2019, 14:07
Better now during testing than have it happen on Sunday in Australia.
Tayyib Abu
27th February 2019, 14:13
Be interesting if they change plans tomorrow
F1 performance (@patent)
27th February 2019, 14:33
Why can’t teams use 2 (or more) cars during testing?
Jere (@jerejj)
27th February 2019, 14:38
@patent I’ve been wondering the same thing as well and for quite some time already.
Nikki (@nikkit)
27th February 2019, 14:43
Costs probably. The smaller teams aren’t having to have both drivers crews on duty all day, don’t need two cars worth of fuel and parts and they only had to have one car and relevant equipment brought down. By limiting everyone to one car, everyone is on something of a level playing field for testing regardless of how much money the team can bring.
They only bring a small number of parts too. Presumably in case large changes are needed. Though, that can be an issue too. Remember -was it 2015?- when Kyvat wrecked the Red Bulls only front wing and they had to spend the rest of the day driving without it as they’d only brought the one and they couldn’t get a new one flown down till too late in the day.
Long story short. Keeping costs down is my theory for that
Chris Garwood
27th February 2019, 14:50
Final sentance of 10.5 of the sporting regulations regarding testing
“In both cases each competitor may only use one car per day.”
Chris Garwood
27th February 2019, 14:56
To clarify that a little more, 10.5 if lengthy and talks about who\what and conditions for whats on track, the final paragraph is about timing and reads
“With the exception of any test being carried out at night, in which case a new test schedule
lasting no more than nine hours will be arranged, running may only take place between 9:00
and 18:00. In both cases each competitor may only use one car per day.”
So it simply down to “you can’t run more than 1 car per day”, you could have two cars there are run them on alternate days BUT you can only have one car on track, and any changes you make to the car (like merc’s nose front wing) you would have to do twice
anon
27th February 2019, 21:01
@patent, as others have surmised, cutting back to a single car for testing has mainly been driven by a desire to cut costs, with there being a secondary benefit in terms of making the workload for the mechanics a little more manageable.
hobo (@hobo)
27th February 2019, 15:33
Obvious question, who was he trying to pass when he did this? :)
Chaitanya
27th February 2019, 16:24
No one, it looks like merc is following him.
hamiledon
27th February 2019, 16:50
Sebastian says his crash was caused by a failure at the front of his car.
Just watch this to have an idea.
hamiledon
27th February 2019, 16:52
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K4KLUgoZec
petes
27th February 2019, 19:04
Well spotted! Vettel was at the front of the car…….(well, almost….)
jon
28th February 2019, 7:17
The radio from vettel from that vidio has been taken from when he crashed in germany in 2018