Bottas almost had same tyre failure as Massa

2016 Chinese Grand Prix

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Valtteri Bottas says he was lucky not to experience the same tyre failures as his team mate during practice.

A wheel rim problem has been identified as the cause of the two punctures Felipe Massa suffered in the first practice. Speaking to reporters after the second session Bottas revealed the same problem had been identified on his car.

“I think I had the same issue in the morning as well,” he said, “just more lucky I think”.

“But we think we have managed to find the problem, we think we have fixed it, but let’s investigate more what we got from second practice. There seems a bit of a problem with the rim’s clearance. but I think we are on top of that.”

Rim damage was visible on Massa’s left-rear wheel after his first tyre failure. “There’s something under the rim too close to the rim inside of the rim that can cause problems,” Bottas confirmed. “I can’t go more into detail.”

Bottas says he was reassured by his engineers they had identified the cause of the problem before he went back out.

“I had a good chat before the second practice with the engineers and they explained [to] me in detail what they found between the sessions,” he said. “I felt confident going in the car that they’d found the problem and if something happens then it happens so there’s no point figuring ahead of that.”

2016 Chinese Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    8 comments on “Bottas almost had same tyre failure as Massa”

    1. Freakish indeed. Extrapolating from current form, it would be downright miraculous were Williams to defend their position in the WCC. Hopefully they find some aero tricks to at least regain their straight-line-speed prowess.

    2. ColdFly F1 (@)
      15th April 2016, 13:18

      I can get my head around blown axles, but changing something to the rim which can damage the tyre (i.e. can move) is totally beyond me. Would be interested to know what this is.

      1. Lewisham Milton
        15th April 2016, 15:41

        It’s clearly not making it faster, so what’s the point?!

      2. @coldfly, is it necessarily an intentional change by Williams? It could be a consequence of a manufacturing defect that produced a component outside of the normal tolerances.

    3. No more talks about the new front wing?

      1. Bottas was supposed to get the new front wing for this race, but it was damaged in the incident with Massa, so they both are using the old one

        1. Sad. The new wing really needs more mileage. The mess around the brake duct could be more costly than it looks

    4. “There’s something under the rim too close to the rim inside of the rim”

      WAT?

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