autoevolution
 

Red Bull Confirm Split Brake Disc for Vettel's Failure

Although some reports in recent days have suggested that the design of the 2010 wheel nuts have caused the failures of Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton in last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing has come up with a more decent explanation earlier today. After some thorough investigations on Vettel's braking issues in Barcelona, the Milton Keynes based team confirmed the cause: a split of the front-left disc.

With approximately 12 laps to go in the Spanish Grand Prix, Vettel encountered a braking problem that caused him to lose more than 2 second per lap as compared to his trailing rivals. In the end, he managed to come in 3rd place at the finish line, despite being advised to quit the race and return to the pits by his race engineers.

The problem was quite bizarre as basically the brake on the left hand side stopped working completely and the disc effectively split in half, straight down the middle of the spline,” said team principal Christian Horner in Monaco, according to Autosport.

You have just got a spacer in there and so he had only got three brakes, so all the bias was towards the rear and he was using mainly the aerodynamics to stop the car and built some huge margin into his braking zones. With having fitted the option tire at the end of the race on relatively light fuel load he actually did a purple sector in the middle sector with three brakes.

It was ironic as I was joking with Adrian (Newey) the night before about his first car being an Austin Allegro which only had three brake discs and unfortunately in the race Sebastian's car turned out to be similar to that. But he managed it incredibly well and to get the car home in third place was a valuable and brave performance by him,” added the British manager.
If you liked the article, please follow us:  Google News icon Google News Youtube Instagram X (Twitter)
 

Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?

You will only receive our top stories