F1technical.net

The sight of an errant wheel from Fernando Alonso's Renault bouncing across the track at the 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix, prompted the FIA to impose new rules this season to ensure wheel nuts remain fastened. Ferrari's solution has been to create an entirely new wheel hub, which features a catch either side of the nut that locks into position (see inset) when the mechanic removes his tyre gun following the wheel change.

"Silverstone was the first race we ran with a completely new specification of wheel nut, which has been very interesting, because in the British Grand Prix, our pit stops were the quickest in the race. Then, in Germany we were again using this new wheel nut, which does work better, but the system is still not perfect and, at Felipe's last tyre change, we lost the connection between the wheel nut and wheel nut gun, which cost us around one and a half seconds. So we have more work to do on perfecting it."