Ferrari promise to fix pit stop issues following the 2011 German Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
Ferrari went through a major pit stop issue during the 2011 Formula 1 German Grand Prix after which they have vowed to fix all such issues.
According to the team’s track operations head Diego Ioverno, the team has decided to adopt a new ‘wheel nut’ which would make their pits faster as compared to their rivals. However, this new system requires a lot of practice to perfect.
“Since the beginning of the year we have had various issues with pit stops, which we are currently fixing step by step, knowing that this year, with so many stops, anything can happen and indeed we have seen other teams also experience difficulties in this
area,” Ioverno told the media.
The team went in to a ‘pit race’ with Red Bull Racing at the Nurburgring since both Sebastian Vettel and Felipe Massa decided to pit at the same time during the last lap of the race after which Vettel took over Massa’s 4th place.
This cost Ferrari 2 valuable points and since Massa was ahead of the reigning world champion before the pits, it was quite disappointing to see him come out of the pits behind him which clearly showed that it was the team’s fault in the pits.
“Silverstone was the first race we ran with a completely new specification of wheel nut, which has been very interesting, because in the British Grand Prix, our pit stops were the quickest in the race,” said the team’s head of track operations.
However, he revealed that the team was using this new system during the German Grand Prix as well but since they are yet to perfect it, they were unable to pull it off perfectly hence the time waste which cost Massa a crucial track position.
The main reason why Ferrari were so disappointed about this problem is that Fernando Alonso was running in second place during the race and since he is getting closer in terms of points in the championship, the team wants the championship leader to finish
with as less points as possible.
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