© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes has still not been able to remove the front-right wheel from Valtteri Bottas‘ car, and will have to do it forcibly at Mercedes’ HQ in Brackley.
At the Monaco Grand Prix Valtteri Bottas’ race was cut short due to a stuck front-right wheel. Mercedes’ pit crew was unable to remove the wheel nut, which meant the Finn had to retire from the race.
Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison explains what went wrong.
“If we don’t quite get the pit stop gun cleanly on the nut, then it can chip away at the driving faces of the nut,” the Briton said.
“We call it machining the nut. It is a bit like when you take a Phillips head screwdriver, and you don’t get it squarely in the cross of the screwdriver.
“You start to round off the driving face of the screwdriver slots, and then you just simply can’t take the screw out of whatever it is you are trying to take it out of because you have no longer got the driving faces.
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“A very similar thing happens with our pit stop nuts if the gun starts spinning and chipping off the driving faces of the wheel nut.
“Given the power of the gun, you can end up with no driving face and you just machine the nut down to a place where there is nothing left to grab a hold of, and that is what we had today.”
Allison says the wheel will have to be removed at Mercedes’ factory, using a high-power drill.
“We eventually didn’t get the wheel off, it is sat in our garage with the wheel still on it.
“It will have to be ground off, get a Dremel out and painfully slice through the remnants of the wheel nut.
“We will do that back at the factory,” concluded the Briton.
