Cracked exhaust the main reason for Nick Heidfeld’s retirement at 2011 Hungarian Grand Prix
According to some recent reports, Lotus Renault GP have revealed the reason for Nick Heidfeld’s retirement at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Heidfeld’s car caught fire right after it came out of the pits and the team has revealed that it was due to a cracked exhaust.
There was an explosion after the car caught fire and the team has explained that it was caused because of an air bottle.
“The incident was highly undesirable, as it has caused us to write off a chassis. We will take steps prior to the next race to reduce the likelihood of a further fire and to ensure that the air bottle cannot overheat,” technical director James Allison said.
Other than that, Allison also revealed that there was not just one reason for the ignition of this fire.
“As with most accidents, several incidents combined to cause the fire that Nick suffered in Hungary. First of all, we ran a slightly different engine mapping strategy in qualifying, which produced hotter than normal exhausts. We believe that this elevated
temperature and caused a preliminary crack in the exhaust pipe,” he said.
However, Heidfeld was fortunate enough to roll out of the car and get to safety as the marshals took the fire out. This retirement dented Renault’s performance this year quite severely as this was the first race where the team failed to finish in the points.
Vitaly Petrov finished in 12th place and it seems that the team is now going to try its best to keep it as safe as possible for its drivers and improve their performance during the summer break as well.
The upcoming race is expected to take place in Belgium after a month’s break where Renault are hoping for some upgrades and performance improvement.
The team has been struggling to cope up with their rivals Mercedes GP in terms of statistics and pace. Renault are in 5th place in the constructors’ standings with 66 points while Mercedes are in 4th place with 80 points.
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