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A glitch in Mercedes’ radio messaging system led to a confusion among the team’s pit crew at the Sakhir Grand Prix and completely destroyed the race for George Russell and Valtteri Bottas.
Both Russell and Bottas were called into the pits for an attempted double-stack after Jack Aitken’s crash triggered a Safety Car. However in the confusion Russell was fitted with two front tyres that were meant for Bottas, while Bottas had to have his old tyres fitted back on.
This meant Russell had to immediately come back in for new tyres, while Bottas struggled on his old set until the end of the race. Team boss Toto Wolff already said that the confusion ensued because of a glitch in the radio messaging system and now Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explains the details.
”We haven’t had enough time to get an absolute and thorough understanding of what went on, but we have found a smoking gun,” Shovlin said.
“That has to do with how the radio system prioritises messages. When for instance Ron [Meadows, sporting director] is calling out the crews and getting them to get the tyres ready for the two drivers, there were a number of broadcasts at that time on the radio system.
“The system knows to prioritise the messages coming from Ron, because the most important thing is the tyres are there: more so than whatever a driver says or whatever someone else in the crew might say.
“But it looks like there is a period whereby the system is deciding to let the prioritised message through, and we missed a key bit of the broadcast.
“[This meant] that half of the tyre collectors didn’t get the message. And it looks like half of them did. Therefore we’ve got the cars coming in, and all the tyres are not ready in the pit lane.”
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This led to the confusion that we all witnessed on our TV screens.
“Obviously it looks like a sort of mess of us not really understanding what we’re doing, but the issue all comes down to this sort of root cause where we lost a key message at a key point.
“There was very little time between the safety car and George coming into the pits. We just need to go through all the logs of everything to see how that was working.
“And once we’ve got a complete understanding of that, and filled in a few of the blanks that we’re not certain of at the moment, we can then look at a solution for the next race in Abu Dhabi.
“This is something that could have caught us out in any of the past three years. And it could have caught us out at the first race next year. So it’s something that’s been there in the system.
“And it was awfully unfortunate for the drivers and desperately unfortunate for George that we found that,” concluded Shovlin.
