General
Unlucky Bottas knows what went wrong during his pit stop in Bahrain
- GPblog.com
Valtteri Bottas had an unfortunate start to the season. The Finn was unable to keep up with teammate Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen. To make matters worse, his pit stop was also ruined making it a lonely race. Mercedes has now indicated where it went wrong.
Damaged wheel nut
Bottas came in on lap 30 of the race and spent a whopping ten seconds at his garage instead of the usual three seconds. A pit stop unfortunately does go wrong sometimes at Mercedes but it's bad luck for it to happen to Bottas. James Allison tells Speedweek what went wrong:
"The man on the right front wheel started to loosen the wheel nut and pulled the impact wrench back slightly before the nut was completely loose from the threads of the wheel carrier. The wheel nut was then stuck and damage occured. Think of it as a screwdriver not sitting perfectly on the screw. If you keep applying force, you will damage the slot and the screw will break. At least that's why the wheel nut didn't come down. In the end, it all came down to the fact that the screwdriver wasn't tightened properly and the wheel nut was damaged."
For the remainder of the race, Bottas was unable to get close to the two in front and he had no threat behind him. This left the Finn with room to make an extra pit stop to take the fastest lap.