Well, to be more accurate, the incident was centered on the rear right-hand wheel of Rosberg's car, which took a journey of its own shortly after the German left his team's pits and ended up into one of the mechanics belonging to Williams-Cosworth.
The Brackley based team's boss Ross Brawn explained what happened during Rosberg's pit stop, saying that it was all an unfortunate miscommunication between the mechanic that was supposed to fix the aforementioned wheel and the jack man. However, the Brit promissed that in the future he would make sure such incidents will not happen again.
“It appears that as the guy came off with the wheel gun, it spat the wheel nut but he didn't see it disappear. He went back on, fired the gun and realized the nut was no longer there so came back out to grab the other gun and the rear jack guy thought he had finished, so he dropped the car and away he went,” said Brawn.
“I think we understand what happened and we will clearly look at how we can prevent it happening again. When the gun went on to take the nut off, the gun hadn't engaged properly so the nut was off the axle and it spat it out. The guns are so quick and powerful now you don't see the nut traveling at the speed of light,” added the Mercedes boss.
Fortunately enough, the incident did not leave any victims within the paddock, the Williams mechanic that had the misfortune to make acquaintance with the tire walking away from the circuit's medical centre with only a broken rib.
This tire incident comes at the same track where last year Fernando Alonso lost a front wheel of his Renault R29 only meters after returning to the circuit after his pit stop. Renault were almost disqualified for the next event back then.
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