Stake F1 Team has huge problems with pit stops this season. In each race, the mechanics struggled to replace wheels in the cars of Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou. After the Australian GP, the situation changed and the team will have to pay a penalty.
Łukasz Kuczera
24 March 2024, 22:01
Press materials / Stake F1 Team / In the photo: Stake F1 Team pit-stop Problems with wheel nuts caused Valtteri Bottas in Bahrain and Guanyu Zhou in Saudi Arabia to spend several dozen seconds with their mechanics. This deprived the Stake F1 Team drivers of any hope for a favorable result in the first Formula 1 races of the 2024 season. In the Australian GP, the situation was supposed to get better.
The Swiss team introduced corrections during pit stops, which were supposed to result in solving the problem in Melbourne. Meanwhile, the Finn once more spent several dozen seconds stopping and lost his chance for points in the Australian GP. Additionally, a wheel nut popped out of the gun and rolled onto the pit lane.
The carelessness of the mechanics might have posed a threat to other cars passing through the pit lane. Therefore, following the Australian Grand Prix, the judges took up the matter. The stewards had no doubt that the Stake F1 Team staff “caused a potentially dangerous situation in the pit lane” and imposed a fine of PLN 5,000 on the Swiss team. euro.
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– This shouldn’t have happened, but we didn’t make any modification that would cause the nut to come off the gun. We checked everything during training and were confident that everything would be fine in the race with our pit stops, Xevi Pujolar, racing director of Stake F1 Team, told motorsport.com.
– Since the first race, we have had some problems with pit stops and wheel threads. They do not appear in training, and we have not encountered such a problem in winter. Every time there is a race, the situation becomes more and more critical. Despite the recent modifications, we had a problem once more in Melbourne. Until we solve this, the situation will be difficult for us. This is not the crew’s problem. The mechanics do everything correctly, Pujolar added.
A Stake F1 Team employee revealed that the problems when changing wheels “have to do with the hardware” and that it will ultimately “take a little more time” to solve.
In the Australian GP, one of Zhou’s pit stops took a very long time, but in this case it was not the fault of the guns or nuts. The Chinese had a problem with the gearbox when entering the pit lane.
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