F1: Ferrari Helped Mercedes To Remove Bottas Wheel Nut, But To No Avail

This was Bottas's second DNF in 5 races, his worst start to a season with Mercedes.

By Sahil Gupta

1 mins read

Published on May 26, 2021

Highlights

Mercedes F1 boss Wolff revealed Ferrari helped remove the wheel
Bottas's car had a wheel stuck after a machining incident at the pitstop
Ferrari was unable to help and now the wheel will come off at the factory

The Monaco GP was a rather uneventful race for what is F1's most glamorous race, and perhaps the most famous race in the world. It featured two retirements - well technically one retirement since Charles Leclerc didn't even start the race. Valtteri Bottas was the unfortunate recipient of a pitstop blunder by the Mercedes which saw him retiring from the race. During the pitstop, his wheel nut refused to come out which resulted in his retirement. In the aftermath of the race, Mercedes technical chief James Allison revealed that the wheel was still lodged in the car and would only be removed at the factory. This happened despite some unusual assistance from arch-rivals Ferrari. Mercedes had a disastrous race with Bottas retiring and Hamilton just managing P7. "The gun made the wheel nut completely round. I've never seen anything like it. Nothing is left of it. Valtteri told us he could see the metal shavings fly away. The tyre is still on the car. Ferrari also helped us with some heavy equipment," revealed Mercedes F1 CEO Toto Wolff. Allison revealed that if the wheel gun doesn't get connected to the wheel nut properly it can chip away at the driving faces. "We call it machining the nut. It's a bit like when you take a Phillips head screwdriver and you don't get it squarely in the cross of the screwdriver. Given the power of the gun, you can end up with no driving face and you just machine the nut down to a place where there's nothing left to grab a hold of, and that's what we had," added the Briton who is set to step down from his role of technical director at Mercedes in a couple of months. Bottas dropped behind Lando Norris in the world championship, while Mercedes seeded ground to Red Bull Photo Credit: AFP Allison will remain at Mercedes moving into a new role - Chief Technical Officer. He will hand the day-to-day reigns of the technical running of the team to Mike Elliot. Wolff also revealed that the botched pitstop wasn't fully the fault of the pit crew but also Bottas. Bottas had pulled up slightly short of the markers. "Valtteri stopped a little too early. This meant the mechanic had to apply the impact wrench at an angle. The awkward angle damaged the wheel nut and we couldn't bring it down," he explained.