Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff has revealed a crack in a fibre optic cable led to its loss of communications with its two drivers during Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas battled through the race with limited communications with their engineers. The team also suffered from a lack of data as a result.
Bottas and Hamilton still managed to finish in third and fourth position, but the problem presented a major distraction while the pair were trying to overtake the Ferrari duo.
Wolff explained the root of the problem; “It was a local hardware issue. We found a crack in a fibre optic cable, that made us fly blind.
“Our whole comms and data systems broke down. We didn’t have any communications on the ‘Fantasy Island’ – that is the middle thing we have – and on the pit wall.
“So no radio comms, no data, no TV feed. We somehow managed to get it back occasionally – and that obviously penalised us strongly.
“So there were conversations at times that Lewis heard and then there were conversations he didn’t hear. A difficult one.”
Wolff highlighted the efforts of the Mercedes team back in Brackley and Brixworth.
“It was an incredible team play,” he added.
“We had lots of people in Brackley and in Brixworth who were our redundancy systems, feeding us massive amounts of information over to us on the radio.
“At times there were six or seven different people speaking to James [Vowles, Mercedes strategist] and we were trying to make the right decisions. That was a really great team effort.”
Comments.
Loading comments…