Jenson Button has made yet another correct tyre call on a damp Shangai track. When most changed to inters, the World Champion kept his tyres and went on to win the Chinese GP. Lewis Hamilton helped McLaren secure a 1-2 finish, ahead of Rosberg and Alonso.
Tarmac eventually breaks. No track gets resurfaced every year.....F1 cars are designed on the limit of components strength....looks more like some cut closer than others...
Imagine how traumatizing it is to be sliding at 200mph, with no steering, no front brakes, no front wheels. Good thing there are 2 braking circuits!
This failure seemed to be from impact and torsion from the bump when the locked wheel came down on it. I was watching a german feed, they zoomed in on the video and you could see the upright rotating with the wheel, a couble degrees, the joints twisted, buckled then exploded. Scary, knowing that a couple laps could cause that kind of failure. I am guessing STR would do an investigation before they put poor buemi back in the car.
similar failure from vibration and braking torque:
So, they were right then to suspect it!!! Still, I'd hate to see them throw away any hopes of fighting for the Championship at the end of the year due to reliability problems at the start...
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H.P.Lovecraft
Sky mentioned in their commentary that Tora Rosso experimented with a new wheel carrier. They have now went back to the older version.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)