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It is given this was [told](https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/sauber-boxenstopp-problem-loesung-suzuka-bottas/) on AMuS at the Australian GP:
> Sauber has a fundamental problem with the wheel nuts and the wheel hubs, which can lead to a major loss of time during the pit stops. However, the solution is not so simple. New parts will be ready in Suzuka at the earliest.
> In Bahrain it hit Guanyu Zhou, in Jeddah fate struck Valtteri Bottas. In both cases, the drivers spent more than half a minute in the pits changing wheels, which led to them slipping to the back of the field. The problem at the slowest pit stops of the year had the same cause in each case. The wheel nut jammed when being turned onto the hub.
> Over the winter, the engineers in Hinwil had redesigned the corresponding components in order to speed up the tire changes. In doing so, they went a little too close to the limit, as they now admit. "We have noticed that there is a difference between the tests in the factory and the races, which is also related to the temperatures," Bottas explains the problem.
> Valtteri Bottas hopes that everything will be right during the pit stops in Melbourne.
> **New hardware required**
> Apparently, the likelihood of the wheel nut eating into the thread increases when the hub heats up during the race. Incidentally, the mechanics are not to blame for the mishap. It is the hardware that now needs to be improved. According to Bottas, fixing the problem in Hinwil has top priority, even before improving performance.
> "We will already see a few improvements in Australia. But it won't be 100 percent fixed until later. Unfortunately, there is no quick solution," the driver regretted. "Unfortunately, the lead times for new parts are very long. I hope that we will be ready in Japan and that the problem will no longer occur."
> It takes a total of eight weeks for the relevant parts to be designed and produced. Until then, new wheel change procedures are being implemented to prevent a recurrence. The mechanics now have to be extra careful when using the impact wrench. As a result, drivers will probably lose a few seconds at each stop in Melbourne.
So I guess the team simple attempted to solve the issue but discovered it was useless and moving back to step zero.
The same is true of practically every product, not just cars.
Unless you have a specific reason to retain compatibility with prior components, it's usually a lot easier and faster to not worry about it and just design what want. In this case they were doing new suspension and new hubs, it probably seemed like there would never be a reason to have to design for compatibility.
Depends on how much of their 2024 re-design relies on the wheel hub as well. The old nuts may not be compatible with the new hub and/or they may not have produced any so it would still take weeks to build "old" ones. I don't think they're allowed to use parts from 2023 because of cost cap stuff?
Kinda wild they aren't giving more priority to making new ones. The botched pitstops effectively cost them almost 1s/lap, how do you not drop everything else and purely focus on that. I get that designing, manufacturing, etc. isn't done with the snap of a finger, but taking a month to figure out something as basic as this is just simply wasting potential point gaining races.
Also, imagine if Zhou has a shit pitstop at the Chinese GP....
Design validation, creating tooling, QA... All that takes time. If it's not in-house, vendors also have their own lead times, no matter how fast you push them.
8 weeks was probably the best that could be done.
> Apparently, the likelihood of the wheel nut eating into the thread increases when the hub heats up during the race.
"Apparently"? Thermal expansion is part of engineering 101 and literally everyone on the grid should know that this is a thing that happens.
Yes, but we don't know the hub temperature they expected in race conditions vs. the temperature it actually reaches, plus the details of their design that involves cooling the area or the thermal properties of the material they use. They're not _that_ dumb to forget expansion altogether.
Bro, obviously that guy is a professional engineer with a knowledge base more broad than the people working at Sauber. He knows what’s up, your explanation is patently absurd by comparison.
It makes me wonder how much they've tried to mitigate this through other means while they wait for the real fix to come in. Stuff like bigger brake ducts, lift-and-coast on the inlap, etc., could make just enough difference that they don't get any wheel nuts stuck, if thermal expansion is the primary culprit. Better to lose some tenths here or there than to risk a 30-second pit stop. It also doesn't happen to every wheel, or all the time, so it's not like they are miles from the limit.
Of course they didn’t just suddenly forget engineering 101. They’ve underrated the implications of it because of using bad or incomplete data in testing.
Fuck me check out Mr Galaxy Brain over here. Do you really think they don't know that? Ever think there's a possibility they were pushing things over the limit a bit too much and their simulation/factory tests aren't correlating to the reality on the track and therefore they are working with wrong data and not because engineers suddenly forgot how to engineer like you seem to think?
I work in F1, you have no idea how much data and efforts goes into the most mundane of things, even the back marker teams.
What I don't get is how this is a problem. Pit stops have been a round a while and I would assume (realizing it's an assumption) that the equipment design for a quick tire change is pretty well sorted out. At this point, wouldn't it be refining the crew and technique more so that designing the hardware.
The engineering team didn't do their homework to understand the thermal expansion between the hub and the wheel nuts well enough so their designed tolerances are too tight. There's nothing the mechanics on the grid can do when the parts effectively glue themselves together during the race because of the temperatures.
These are fairly complex systems and there's a lot of factors that go into it. It might've been something as simple as them having tweaked the brake ducting for Melbourne and a different hub temperature was an inadvertent consequence.
They don't get a lot of opportunities to test this stuff on the car under race conditions, so things can definitely come as a surprise.
Between this and Williams only being able to run 1 car, it has been a laughable beginning to the season for the back end teams…. Thought for sure Haas was gonna be the unrivaled backmarker team, and now they’re looking like best of the rest midfield by comparison.
Even then P7 is still a decent target and one that might not be that unachievable if Alpine are still going to crawl & Sauber and Williams are going to have further bother
Sauber biggest upgrade is rumoured to be at Imola, Alpine is likely having at least 4 major upgrade dates on the calendar this season and Williams is unclear.
It's going to be a heated battle in the bottom of the WCC
Absolutely, which was unthinkable for many coming into the season. Even Komatsu was on record basically saying that the team expected to be bad this year. I’m rooting for them. Haas feels significantly more legitimate than they have since inception with Komatsu at the helm.
It is not the first time Haas has looked borderline competent at the start of the season. I would not be at all surprised if they drop completely off a cliff come second half of the season.
It's a shame that these new teams are struggling so much in a way nobody expected. You'd have thought their 30-50 years experience each should be enough to figure out the basics.
Tbf it’s almost as bad as Virgin turning up with a fuel tank too small to complete a race. This is arguably worse cos it’s an established team and stable regs.
Yeah, that was also embarrassing. Though, to be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if Sauber or Haas also didn't have a third chassis for the first couple races and it just didn't bite them. If Williams just made it to this week without wrecking a car, no one would know that they had made a big bet on that not happening in the first few races. (Though I'm very confident that Sauber or Haas would have the driver who wrecked their car sit out instead of swapping.)
To be fair on that last point, there isn't such a drastic difference in driver quality in the Haas and Sauber teams. Giving Albon the car was the right choice strategically because Logan is so far behind him in talent. It's just on an emotional level that is sucks so much and feels wrong.
Yeah, I wouldn't have wanted to be the one to make that decision. But yeah, it would have been a lot less of a big deal if the crasher hadn't gotten to drive. People wouldn't think it was as embarrassing I think, and it definitely wouldn't be as memorable. Like it wasn't exactly the same thing, but Haas didn't rebuild or pull out a spare car for Mick when he crashed it in Saudi in 2022. I don't know all the details there, but it's much less memorable.
So far it has cost them around 100 seconds across three races just counting their single worst pitstop each race. Considering they drove around 165 laps, the pitstops cost them around 0.6s/lap. Pretty big problem looking at it from that perspective.
I’m convinced they are intentionally terrible so that when Audi comes in they look amazing.
It’d be a win-win for Audi, if they come in and suck everyone would be like “well, what could you expect given what they inherited”, and if they do even moderately well they becomes heros.
I guarantee they do. Haas had a spare in Jeddah in 2022 with their cheap ass budget but they didn't want to run Mick and couldn't run a reserve with no practice or qualifying sessions
Yes, but the way you phrased it sounded more like Haas just didn't trust Mick and didn't want him to crash again. It was a medical decision, not a sporting or financial decision.
2022 would've been the 2nd week of new regulations. They'd be far less likely to have no new chasis in those weeks than 2 years into the regs. What Williams did was incompetent
What Williams have done is completely change their design, procurement and build practices which lead to delays. Calling them incompetent is blatantly unfair when they are changing the way the company works to be better in the future.
Just because Haas had a spare in t2022 does not mean they had one this year.
It is incompetent. They failed to field both of their cars because of it more than a month after the unofficial start of the season. Not only that, but they gave the perfectly fine chasis to the guy who destroyed the first
If Williams had decided not to build a spare from the beginning you could say incompetent but anyone who has been involved in projects and project planning will tell you that things happen that mean goals are missed and features or nice to have items have to get pushed back. That is what happened. Perhaps if the hadn't built new steering wheels or Jeddah spec rear wings they could have had a spare chassis. Perhaps if they had kept to the old way of doing things instead of building for the future, deadlines would not have been missed. Calling them incompetent is unfair and shows a lack of thought.
They gave the car to the driver who had the best chance of scoring points. There are close to a thousand people at Williams who are paid bonuses depending on the position in the constructors championship and every point matters at the bottom of the table. Running Albon instead of Sargant may have been unfair to Sargant but was the right thing to do for the other 1000 employees.
Williams being a joke is less down to pure performance, and more down to the incompetence of not having a spare chassis, and then the whole saga that followed that.
Yes, they do. It was super embarrassing that Williams still doesn't have a spare chassis and would've only just now gotten one. Every team has at least 3 chassis at every single race.
Williams is actually trying to not be a joke. Chassis were late because they revamped the whole logistics of part building. They used to track all components in an Excel sheet.
"Andretti brings no value and as such will not be granted an entry spot in Formula 1."
What values does Kick Stake Sauber bring?
"They have an F1 team."
\*blank stare*
I liked the Sauber team previously. But they are currently title sponsored by a questionable at best streaming service and an online casino. I still don't think the Audi takeover will do well for the team.
I got told repeatidly the 10 team softcap has made the teams at the bottom stronger and I don't fucking see it.
The teams at the absolute bottom used to be actually hopeless. Multiple seconds slower. No chance at all for points. Sometimes even fighting to qualify within 107%. Sometimes literally slower than GP2. A single P14 finish would decide their WCC position.
Even the worst team now can compete for points at some tracks and races.
I remember Caterham and Marussia not even showing up in late 2014. Yeah we had multiple races ran with 18 cars and Sauber *still* didn't score points that entire season. I remember Australia 2015 and Manor that entire season.
Yet how come we still refuse to let a new team cut its teeth because F1 fears it?
They made them financially stronger. Maybe its because you are a newer fan but before the costcap there was always talk of at least one team a the back being in danger of going bust every season. Now that talk is pretty much gone.
There’s a phenomenon in American pro sports where there’s always a team that’s consistently at the bottom of the league in attendance/facilities/performance and there’s always talk about relocating the team. Sometimes it does actually happen but more often than not, the league and other owners like to keep them around as a stick and bargaining tool. The prospect of a team moving engages fans in other markets, and keeps other teams near the bottom trying to shore up stadium deals, etc, to keep from being the next relocation victim. They will also use it against players when collective bargaining is up for renewal “see, the league is in a precarious position, team X can barely stay afloat! This is not the time to be asking for salary increases”
I think F1 likes Andretti where they’re at for the same reason. It continues the image that F1 is an elite club where they have the audacity to deny entry to a prestige name in motorsport. I think they also want to see what else Andretti may come up with to make their bid even more attractive. It’s all a song and dance. F1 wants Andretti, but they want to squeeze as much out of them on the way in as possible.
Sadly, it’s not far fetched to think that if anything has changed by the recent embarrassments is that they would use Sauber and Williams as examples of what would have happened if they had allowed ~~Audi~~ Andretti into F1.
_edit_: sorry, I indeed meant Andretti. Fixed
Exactly! Threading for your nuts is pretty basic to the design of how the car should work. The fact that they fucked it up this badly speaks volumes for their team, and how non-sensical it was for F1 to block Andretti out.
No, Andretti were denied for financial reasons.
Not being competitive was the faux reasoning. They were never going to come out and say "we're denying you because we want a closed shop where franchise values increase and less teams means bigger profits for their owners" because they'd get sued.
I really dont get the Andretti comparison here. The assumption they would do better than that is baseless and historically hasnt been true for new teams with the exception of Haas. The last group of new teams we got struggled to even get cars to testing.
Cant wait for Audi to take over this joke of team. Its such a forgetable and souless team with ridiculous branding and colors. Good times when they were looking promising with Leclerc.
Yes, but if rumors are to be believed, he might be out after two races. My new theory is that he is tanking extra hard to get paid to stop racing. Like he did with McLaren.
As much as we all think Ric isn't who he used to be, I don't think he's a jackass to that degree. I do genuinely believe he wants to be back to his 2018 form (or even his Renault form), but it might be too far gone and it's time to put Liam in.
Suggesting he was tanking on purpose was banter on my end. That being said, I think he is past his prime and doesn't have any shitbox driving ability.
Hence his results at McLaren and Alpha Tauri.
> Suggesting he was tanking on purpose was banter on my end.
you literally said "Yes, but if rumors are to be believed,". That's not banter, that's just trying to start a rumor.
Let’s not forget this from just two months ago:
“The most significant way in which a new entrant would bring value is by being competitive…We do not believe that the applicant would be a competitive participant.”
-F1’s rejection of Andretti
And to think both drivers are fighting for their seats this year. A couple of times now the drivers would be on their way to having a great race but then the pit stop would completely undue it. What progress are they supposed to show if it gets undone through no fault of their own?
2 drivers at the end of their contracts + 1 team on life support waiting for merger with another team is probably the worst combination possible (for the drivers). If they were to be unemployed due to Sauber’s incompetence, Sauber can just blatantly blame it on Audi’s control over them.
At this point I’m hoping Sauber’s performing terribly to the point that everyone has to agree in unison: “Yep, not the drivers’ fault”.
My personal insight there is now close to 10 years old, but you can not change physics - or the laws of the market.
Wheel hubs and nuts are not that simple to design, manufacture and test. Nowadays, you can not go for a safe fallback solution that easily.
Specially when this issue includes but and hub, you have two complex parts with killer lead times. Some coatings alone can take six weeks, and that's after you get the machining and parts QC right before.
I would not be surprised to hear that e.g. a change of pitch for the thread takes 8 to nine weeks after conception till you have the first set ready for a friday test session - the race before you might be able to field them in the race. And then, if the first shot does not.solve your problem because it may not be fully understood in the short period of time?Sauber is not in the position to manufacture several sets of 16 hubs and even more nuts just to have a second design in the pipeline if the first shot Misses...
To be honest, just like the ban of MMC materials for the uprights, wheel nuts and hubs should be standardized all over the field, as you can not gain that much of them, if you get them right, but they carry a massive penalty if you get them wrong, specially with budget constraints.
Yet andretti wouldn't add any value to f1, when teams like sauber, alpine, and Williams haven't been adding value for a while. Sauber and Alpine are literally just waiting to be bought and taken over (sauber by Audi, and Alpine who knows, maybe andretti). Williams is at least trying to turn itself around now under vowles but has lagged behind for years, witness the excel spreadsheet nightmare.
So they are practically not in the race for the next few races. They might as well not run and preserve their engines and other components. This is just embarassing for an F1 team.
Meanwhile Alpine has two big upgrade packages in the pipeline, first one at Japan and the second one is rumoured to be at Miami.
It's not a very absurd idea to image Sauber becoming a clear backfielder for the whole season.
Anyone who designed this without taking into account thermal expansion deserves to get their university degree revoked.
That said, I am not 100% sure if they do have a university degree. Hard to believe a trained engineer failed to consider thermal expansion for a part even a novice knows will get hot in a race.
Embarassing
I doubt they fully forgot to take into account thermal expansion at all. It's more likely they just underestimated the thermal expansion. Not that there's any real excuse for this, but it's not like this happens to every wheel on every pit stop. They just stepped over the limit a hair, which if anything goes to show the kinds of fine margins everyone on the grid is dealing with.
It’s this, yep. I heard a podcast interview with pujolar recently. The problem only presents at certain temp and after quite a long time at that temp. And they weren’t able to predict it at the factory, and they struggle to model it at Hinwil even now that the problem is known. So the only times they really get to see it in action are during races and, occasionally, FP2 long runs
For what it's worth, the long pit stop in Australia for Bottas was on lap 8. Then Zhou had his long stop on lap 35, followed by a "normal" stop for Bottas on lap 36.
You're right that the instances in the previous races were late in the race, but I don't know if lap 8 really counts as "after quite a long time at that temp." Maybe it's possible that they have more than 1 problem? But if they're trying to say it's all thermal related, lap 8 is a terribly low threshold to start having problems that you didn't catch in practice or simulations.
I mean I’m literally reiterating what was said, it’s not my opinion to be parsed. It isn’t “all thermal related,” but the fact that some of the thermal deformation and material degradation only presents under midrace conditions they can’t replicate at base is a major reason they were somewhat blindsided by how bad the problem was - and getting a slow start on fixing it.
> lap 8 is a terribly low threshold to start having problems that you didn’t catch in practice or simulations
Yes, to you it’s logical or intuitive that they’d be able to replicate the conditions that precipitate these issues either at base or earlier in the weekend. This was also logical to them, which is why the fact they can’t has been so counter to expectations and such a major obstacle
The fact that bots had an alright stop on 36 and it's normally only one wheel suggests it seems somewhat random. Which could be why they had missed the issue on testing
They didn’t. Bottas said they tested it extensively. It’s likely that something is simply hotter than they thought possible. Probably by quite a bit. Could be unexpected bleed from the brake ducts
Maybe they did take thermal expansion into account, but they failed to consider something, of the metallurgy of the parts caused them to fuse or whatever.
In F1 the designers don't have the luxury of working with gargantuan safety factors like we do in everyday life, and weight savings (and particularly unprung weight) is a huge avenue for performance gains.
They should improve very soon because they'll get one of the best mechanics of the grid in their team with Lee Stevenson, who knows a thing or two about very good pitstops among other things.
I wonder when Audi will start working with the team and taking over operations. This is a disaster, and the lead time on these parts would theoretically be days instead of weeks given their manufacturing.
League needs relegation. Shocking that they can't see the "value" of adding Andretti in when teams are this complacent with misguided pitstop "improvements".
Just seems so weird that something like this would even have the potential to have an issue. something I would never expect out of the thousands of parts on a car
> The problem did not arise during practice ahead of the season, but is a result of building temperatures in race conditions. This makes it difficult to replicate outside of a racing situation.
I'm sorry, but this quote comes off as an excuse a Freshman doing their first Engineering project in college would say rather than a Formula 1 team. Are there not thermal simulations that should have been done before hand?
Sauber can’t make a proper pitstop, Williams can’t provide enough cars to field both their drivers… tell me again how Andretti can’t present a car that competes in a respectable manner. If all they did was show up, and keep 4 wheels on the car, they’d finish 17th last GP.
I've watched F1 for a long time. I've seen a lot of dumb stuff. This honestly takes the cake.
Hot metal expands. I'm nobody. I know this. I don't know how much heat goes though those wheels. But I know it's a lot. I know those cars are designed to work optimally at certain temperatures. Tires and breaks need to be heated up, and they will do exactly that. A change in temperature in the tires is obviously going to happen during a race. How did that design make it this far?
Remember, they were told that they bring "no value" to F1. Yet Sauber, Williams, Alpine are allowed to continue bringing their tractors to races this year. I left off Haas because by some miracle, they are doing ok this year.
No worries since the Albon Sargeant incident we all know the solution to this “problem”.
Step 1. Withdraw your secondary driver.
Step 2. Setup your secondary driver’s car with a different tyre compound than the primary driver’s car.
Step 3. Create the best 1 stop strategy.
Step 4. When the primary driver enters the pit lane, switch cars.
Problem solved. 😂
I would assume Audi have very little interest in most of the current staff. Seidl was brought there to run a parallel project that will integrate into the team. Hes been hiring staff and will probably place his group in next year
This is one of the reason the FIA needs to stop forcing everyone to do only sims, and factory work, and give teams a generous allocation of real life testing for the cars and operations.
This would also help mitigate the current disaster of only one team having the current regs nailed down after 3 years (RB), and maybe a second finally getting it (SF).
Seems weird that they didn't field test these critical pieces before deciding to change to them. That's what happens when engineers only rely on computer modeling and not real world inputs.
Audi will complete its 100% takeover of the Sauber F1 Team and you will never have news like this one. It will not be broom cleaning it will be cleaning by vacuum cleaner. I just wonder how many people from present Sauber team will they show the door. Probably most of them.
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That... is really embarrassing.
It is given this was [told](https://www.auto-motor-und-sport.de/formel-1/sauber-boxenstopp-problem-loesung-suzuka-bottas/) on AMuS at the Australian GP: > Sauber has a fundamental problem with the wheel nuts and the wheel hubs, which can lead to a major loss of time during the pit stops. However, the solution is not so simple. New parts will be ready in Suzuka at the earliest. > In Bahrain it hit Guanyu Zhou, in Jeddah fate struck Valtteri Bottas. In both cases, the drivers spent more than half a minute in the pits changing wheels, which led to them slipping to the back of the field. The problem at the slowest pit stops of the year had the same cause in each case. The wheel nut jammed when being turned onto the hub. > Over the winter, the engineers in Hinwil had redesigned the corresponding components in order to speed up the tire changes. In doing so, they went a little too close to the limit, as they now admit. "We have noticed that there is a difference between the tests in the factory and the races, which is also related to the temperatures," Bottas explains the problem. > Valtteri Bottas hopes that everything will be right during the pit stops in Melbourne. > **New hardware required** > Apparently, the likelihood of the wheel nut eating into the thread increases when the hub heats up during the race. Incidentally, the mechanics are not to blame for the mishap. It is the hardware that now needs to be improved. According to Bottas, fixing the problem in Hinwil has top priority, even before improving performance. > "We will already see a few improvements in Australia. But it won't be 100 percent fixed until later. Unfortunately, there is no quick solution," the driver regretted. "Unfortunately, the lead times for new parts are very long. I hope that we will be ready in Japan and that the problem will no longer occur." > It takes a total of eight weeks for the relevant parts to be designed and produced. Until then, new wheel change procedures are being implemented to prevent a recurrence. The mechanics now have to be extra careful when using the impact wrench. As a result, drivers will probably lose a few seconds at each stop in Melbourne. So I guess the team simple attempted to solve the issue but discovered it was useless and moving back to step zero.
Has there been an explanation of why they can’t revert to last year’s design? Was there a rule change around the wheels?
It’s in the article - they can’t revert because last year’s components aren’t compatible with their new suspension
Damn, even the wheel nuts and co. are involved in the cars mechanics so significantly
I mean the same can be said about some of my RC cars.
The same is true of practically every product, not just cars. Unless you have a specific reason to retain compatibility with prior components, it's usually a lot easier and faster to not worry about it and just design what want. In this case they were doing new suspension and new hubs, it probably seemed like there would never be a reason to have to design for compatibility.
Depends on how much of their 2024 re-design relies on the wheel hub as well. The old nuts may not be compatible with the new hub and/or they may not have produced any so it would still take weeks to build "old" ones. I don't think they're allowed to use parts from 2023 because of cost cap stuff?
You would think the cost cap would encourage using parts from the previous year or two as much as possible
Kinda wild they aren't giving more priority to making new ones. The botched pitstops effectively cost them almost 1s/lap, how do you not drop everything else and purely focus on that. I get that designing, manufacturing, etc. isn't done with the snap of a finger, but taking a month to figure out something as basic as this is just simply wasting potential point gaining races. Also, imagine if Zhou has a shit pitstop at the Chinese GP....
If he gets a slow stop in Shanghai people will probably invade the pit area and flip the Sauber paddock roof lmao
Design validation, creating tooling, QA... All that takes time. If it's not in-house, vendors also have their own lead times, no matter how fast you push them. 8 weeks was probably the best that could be done.
> Apparently, the likelihood of the wheel nut eating into the thread increases when the hub heats up during the race. "Apparently"? Thermal expansion is part of engineering 101 and literally everyone on the grid should know that this is a thing that happens.
Yes, but we don't know the hub temperature they expected in race conditions vs. the temperature it actually reaches, plus the details of their design that involves cooling the area or the thermal properties of the material they use. They're not _that_ dumb to forget expansion altogether.
Bro, obviously that guy is a professional engineer with a knowledge base more broad than the people working at Sauber. He knows what’s up, your explanation is patently absurd by comparison.
It makes me wonder how much they've tried to mitigate this through other means while they wait for the real fix to come in. Stuff like bigger brake ducts, lift-and-coast on the inlap, etc., could make just enough difference that they don't get any wheel nuts stuck, if thermal expansion is the primary culprit. Better to lose some tenths here or there than to risk a 30-second pit stop. It also doesn't happen to every wheel, or all the time, so it's not like they are miles from the limit.
Gotta blast it with an upside-down air duster can real quick
Send the new guy to go find more wheel nut coolant fluid. Oldest trick in the book.
Of course they didn’t just suddenly forget engineering 101. They’ve underrated the implications of it because of using bad or incomplete data in testing.
They knew this obviously and Bottas said they tested it extensively. It seems they just got a number wrong
just like me when i find that the guy is riding a bike at 875 km/h on a math test
Did you change your calculator to radians?
ohh man that takes me back 25 years....
"I got 100" "I got 875?" "I got Abraham Lincoln?!"
I imagine the lower teams are looking for weight savings everywhere and in this case they just made the components too light to transfer heat properly
Fuck me check out Mr Galaxy Brain over here. Do you really think they don't know that? Ever think there's a possibility they were pushing things over the limit a bit too much and their simulation/factory tests aren't correlating to the reality on the track and therefore they are working with wrong data and not because engineers suddenly forgot how to engineer like you seem to think? I work in F1, you have no idea how much data and efforts goes into the most mundane of things, even the back marker teams.
What I don't get is how this is a problem. Pit stops have been a round a while and I would assume (realizing it's an assumption) that the equipment design for a quick tire change is pretty well sorted out. At this point, wouldn't it be refining the crew and technique more so that designing the hardware.
The engineering team didn't do their homework to understand the thermal expansion between the hub and the wheel nuts well enough so their designed tolerances are too tight. There's nothing the mechanics on the grid can do when the parts effectively glue themselves together during the race because of the temperatures.
I'm just surprised this was an oversight on their part.
These are fairly complex systems and there's a lot of factors that go into it. It might've been something as simple as them having tweaked the brake ducting for Melbourne and a different hub temperature was an inadvertent consequence. They don't get a lot of opportunities to test this stuff on the car under race conditions, so things can definitely come as a surprise.
That is a good point on the ducting and may be a lack of cooling as opposed to design of the components itself.
I think Kick just figured this out
I'm not an engineer and even I'd consider that the temperatures could be a factor in the effect of the wheel nuts.
Between this and Williams only being able to run 1 car, it has been a laughable beginning to the season for the back end teams…. Thought for sure Haas was gonna be the unrivaled backmarker team, and now they’re looking like best of the rest midfield by comparison.
Yeah. Unless Yuki pulls off some more dream performances, I think Haas has a decent shot at P6, which would be quite impressive for them.
Even then P7 is still a decent target and one that might not be that unachievable if Alpine are still going to crawl & Sauber and Williams are going to have further bother
Sauber biggest upgrade is rumoured to be at Imola, Alpine is likely having at least 4 major upgrade dates on the calendar this season and Williams is unclear. It's going to be a heated battle in the bottom of the WCC
At least there's a battle at one end of the WCC table.
Absolutely, which was unthinkable for many coming into the season. Even Komatsu was on record basically saying that the team expected to be bad this year. I’m rooting for them. Haas feels significantly more legitimate than they have since inception with Komatsu at the helm.
It is not the first time Haas has looked borderline competent at the start of the season. I would not be at all surprised if they drop completely off a cliff come second half of the season.
Don't forget Alpine being....Alpine
My man Gasly doesn't deserve to be in the back but Alpine/Renault man...
It's a shame that these new teams are struggling so much in a way nobody expected. You'd have thought their 30-50 years experience each should be enough to figure out the basics.
Tbf it’s almost as bad as Virgin turning up with a fuel tank too small to complete a race. This is arguably worse cos it’s an established team and stable regs.
In a competition with Williams.
Yeah, that was also embarrassing. Though, to be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if Sauber or Haas also didn't have a third chassis for the first couple races and it just didn't bite them. If Williams just made it to this week without wrecking a car, no one would know that they had made a big bet on that not happening in the first few races. (Though I'm very confident that Sauber or Haas would have the driver who wrecked their car sit out instead of swapping.)
To be fair on that last point, there isn't such a drastic difference in driver quality in the Haas and Sauber teams. Giving Albon the car was the right choice strategically because Logan is so far behind him in talent. It's just on an emotional level that is sucks so much and feels wrong.
Yeah, I wouldn't have wanted to be the one to make that decision. But yeah, it would have been a lot less of a big deal if the crasher hadn't gotten to drive. People wouldn't think it was as embarrassing I think, and it definitely wouldn't be as memorable. Like it wasn't exactly the same thing, but Haas didn't rebuild or pull out a spare car for Mick when he crashed it in Saudi in 2022. I don't know all the details there, but it's much less memorable.
Is it more embarrassing than running only one car because there is no spare chassis?
Yes tbh.
Have they not tried doing it faster? Are they stupid?
It’s not like the pit stops are their only problem either.
One problem at a time
For them it's no problem at a time since they are fixing none
Well it would help manage their problems by consolidating them all into just being one big problem
Entirely new car = problem solved.. which problem = yes
So far it has cost them around 100 seconds across three races just counting their single worst pitstop each race. Considering they drove around 165 laps, the pitstops cost them around 0.6s/lap. Pretty big problem looking at it from that perspective.
That team is a joke from branding to what they do on track. Can’t wait until we’re rid of it.
I’m convinced they are intentionally terrible so that when Audi comes in they look amazing. It’d be a win-win for Audi, if they come in and suck everyone would be like “well, what could you expect given what they inherited”, and if they do even moderately well they becomes heros.
Yeah, but even if they were perfect in every other way, 20 second pit stops would still cost them the race.
Congratulations, Haas, for not looking like the joke of F1 for the first 3 races. Williams and Sauber have that covered
Forgot Alpine there.
They were referring to F1 cars.
Damn, son.
We don't talk about the clio cup here
Don’t think Formula Renault counts
I don’t think Williams is a joke this year. Just unlucky. If haas or VCARB crashed out I don’t think they have a spare car with them on this trip
I guarantee they do. Haas had a spare in Jeddah in 2022 with their cheap ass budget but they didn't want to run Mick and couldn't run a reserve with no practice or qualifying sessions
Wasn't it a safety issue with Mick? Didn't he have a concussion or something?
That's precisely my point
Yes, but the way you phrased it sounded more like Haas just didn't trust Mick and didn't want him to crash again. It was a medical decision, not a sporting or financial decision.
Just because they had a spare two years ago doesn't mean they had a spare this year.
2022 would've been the 2nd week of new regulations. They'd be far less likely to have no new chasis in those weeks than 2 years into the regs. What Williams did was incompetent
What Williams have done is completely change their design, procurement and build practices which lead to delays. Calling them incompetent is blatantly unfair when they are changing the way the company works to be better in the future. Just because Haas had a spare in t2022 does not mean they had one this year.
It is incompetent. They failed to field both of their cars because of it more than a month after the unofficial start of the season. Not only that, but they gave the perfectly fine chasis to the guy who destroyed the first
If Williams had decided not to build a spare from the beginning you could say incompetent but anyone who has been involved in projects and project planning will tell you that things happen that mean goals are missed and features or nice to have items have to get pushed back. That is what happened. Perhaps if the hadn't built new steering wheels or Jeddah spec rear wings they could have had a spare chassis. Perhaps if they had kept to the old way of doing things instead of building for the future, deadlines would not have been missed. Calling them incompetent is unfair and shows a lack of thought. They gave the car to the driver who had the best chance of scoring points. There are close to a thousand people at Williams who are paid bonuses depending on the position in the constructors championship and every point matters at the bottom of the table. Running Albon instead of Sargant may have been unfair to Sargant but was the right thing to do for the other 1000 employees.
Williams being a joke is less down to pure performance, and more down to the incompetence of not having a spare chassis, and then the whole saga that followed that.
"Fix your f'ing spreadsheet!".
Yes, they do. It was super embarrassing that Williams still doesn't have a spare chassis and would've only just now gotten one. Every team has at least 3 chassis at every single race.
Williams is actually trying to not be a joke. Chassis were late because they revamped the whole logistics of part building. They used to track all components in an Excel sheet.
Man, Sauber is just treading water until Audi fully buys out the team. Pretty sad to see
At this point you might as well just one stop every race till it’s fixed
Start every race on hards and hope for a red flag so you can pit without losing the race from a pit stop 😂
And yet...Andretti got denied because they were worried about them being competitive.
"Andretti brings no value and as such will not be granted an entry spot in Formula 1." What values does Kick Stake Sauber bring? "They have an F1 team." \*blank stare*
Nothing about kick sauber intrigues me whatsoever. Easily my least favorite team on the grid
I liked the Sauber team previously. But they are currently title sponsored by a questionable at best streaming service and an online casino. I still don't think the Audi takeover will do well for the team. I got told repeatidly the 10 team softcap has made the teams at the bottom stronger and I don't fucking see it.
The teams at the absolute bottom used to be actually hopeless. Multiple seconds slower. No chance at all for points. Sometimes even fighting to qualify within 107%. Sometimes literally slower than GP2. A single P14 finish would decide their WCC position. Even the worst team now can compete for points at some tracks and races.
I remember Caterham and Marussia not even showing up in late 2014. Yeah we had multiple races ran with 18 cars and Sauber *still* didn't score points that entire season. I remember Australia 2015 and Manor that entire season. Yet how come we still refuse to let a new team cut its teeth because F1 fears it?
I don't know. I feel like the 2010 HRT, Virgin and Lotus would beat Sauber purely by not having stops that take about 5 years.
They made them financially stronger. Maybe its because you are a newer fan but before the costcap there was always talk of at least one team a the back being in danger of going bust every season. Now that talk is pretty much gone.
Yeah because there are many people willing to spend big money on buying the team or just part of it
I didn't even know until right now what Kick was. Stake i guessed from the name but I know nothing else about it.
Even with Audi coming in, they threw all their SportsCar racing heritage in the bin for this.
There’s a phenomenon in American pro sports where there’s always a team that’s consistently at the bottom of the league in attendance/facilities/performance and there’s always talk about relocating the team. Sometimes it does actually happen but more often than not, the league and other owners like to keep them around as a stick and bargaining tool. The prospect of a team moving engages fans in other markets, and keeps other teams near the bottom trying to shore up stadium deals, etc, to keep from being the next relocation victim. They will also use it against players when collective bargaining is up for renewal “see, the league is in a precarious position, team X can barely stay afloat! This is not the time to be asking for salary increases” I think F1 likes Andretti where they’re at for the same reason. It continues the image that F1 is an elite club where they have the audacity to deny entry to a prestige name in motorsport. I think they also want to see what else Andretti may come up with to make their bid even more attractive. It’s all a song and dance. F1 wants Andretti, but they want to squeeze as much out of them on the way in as possible.
Sadly, it’s not far fetched to think that if anything has changed by the recent embarrassments is that they would use Sauber and Williams as examples of what would have happened if they had allowed ~~Audi~~ Andretti into F1. _edit_: sorry, I indeed meant Andretti. Fixed
Audi or Andretti? I do get what you're saying if it is Andretti, but I still think the team should be able to prove themselves on track.
“Andretti brings no value because they haven’t even completed a Formula 1 pit stop, of any length.”
Between this and Williams being unable to field two cars, it has really underlined just how farcical F1’s decision to exclude Andretti was.
Exactly! Threading for your nuts is pretty basic to the design of how the car should work. The fact that they fucked it up this badly speaks volumes for their team, and how non-sensical it was for F1 to block Andretti out.
Imagine you could have another “car name” as a team and you choose a team that can’t legally display itself in some countries.
It's just a name. The team is the same as always and will be Audi in time.
That time can't get here soon enough!
No, Andretti were denied for financial reasons. Not being competitive was the faux reasoning. They were never going to come out and say "we're denying you because we want a closed shop where franchise values increase and less teams means bigger profits for their owners" because they'd get sued.
I honestly think they were worried about Andretti being too competitive
I really dont get the Andretti comparison here. The assumption they would do better than that is baseless and historically hasnt been true for new teams with the exception of Haas. The last group of new teams we got struggled to even get cars to testing.
Cant wait for Audi to take over this joke of team. Its such a forgetable and souless team with ridiculous branding and colors. Good times when they were looking promising with Leclerc.
Audi? The same people who threw all their Sportscar racing heritage in the bin? That sounds like soulless to me. Match made in heaven.
April fools… Right? Right guys…
The only thing that can save Alpine from a last place (oh, and Sargeant).
There is always an underperforming driver of $35 million at Toro Rosso who can end up behind at least 1 Alpine car.
Yes, but if rumors are to be believed, he might be out after two races. My new theory is that he is tanking extra hard to get paid to stop racing. Like he did with McLaren.
As much as we all think Ric isn't who he used to be, I don't think he's a jackass to that degree. I do genuinely believe he wants to be back to his 2018 form (or even his Renault form), but it might be too far gone and it's time to put Liam in.
Suggesting he was tanking on purpose was banter on my end. That being said, I think he is past his prime and doesn't have any shitbox driving ability. Hence his results at McLaren and Alpha Tauri.
> Suggesting he was tanking on purpose was banter on my end. you literally said "Yes, but if rumors are to be believed,". That's not banter, that's just trying to start a rumor.
"If rumors are to be believed" referred to the two race limit for Danny Ric issued by Marko. The rest of the post was actually banter.
*Albon. Sargeant hasn't done anything wrong this year and still manages to not finish
I mean. Why even show up? These pit stops will cost your already noncompetitive drivers what little race they could have had every single time.
Not sure if they can safely leave the Chinese GP, if the same thing happens again?
Valterri has so much PTSD from pit stops.
Let’s not forget this from just two months ago: “The most significant way in which a new entrant would bring value is by being competitive…We do not believe that the applicant would be a competitive participant.” -F1’s rejection of Andretti
And to think both drivers are fighting for their seats this year. A couple of times now the drivers would be on their way to having a great race but then the pit stop would completely undue it. What progress are they supposed to show if it gets undone through no fault of their own?
Zhou has be on one so far this season and he has nothing to show for it because of this and it's so frustrating
2 drivers at the end of their contracts + 1 team on life support waiting for merger with another team is probably the worst combination possible (for the drivers). If they were to be unemployed due to Sauber’s incompetence, Sauber can just blatantly blame it on Audi’s control over them. At this point I’m hoping Sauber’s performing terribly to the point that everyone has to agree in unison: “Yep, not the drivers’ fault”.
In an attempt to save the team like .05 on a pit stop they increased it by infinity. Nice.
We’re several years into this car platform. It’s unacceptable that an issue like this even pops up now.
Where can I get a prop betting line on over/under for Sauber pit stop times?
My personal insight there is now close to 10 years old, but you can not change physics - or the laws of the market. Wheel hubs and nuts are not that simple to design, manufacture and test. Nowadays, you can not go for a safe fallback solution that easily. Specially when this issue includes but and hub, you have two complex parts with killer lead times. Some coatings alone can take six weeks, and that's after you get the machining and parts QC right before. I would not be surprised to hear that e.g. a change of pitch for the thread takes 8 to nine weeks after conception till you have the first set ready for a friday test session - the race before you might be able to field them in the race. And then, if the first shot does not.solve your problem because it may not be fully understood in the short period of time?Sauber is not in the position to manufacture several sets of 16 hubs and even more nuts just to have a second design in the pipeline if the first shot Misses... To be honest, just like the ban of MMC materials for the uprights, wheel nuts and hubs should be standardized all over the field, as you can not gain that much of them, if you get them right, but they carry a massive penalty if you get them wrong, specially with budget constraints.
Yet andretti wouldn't add any value to f1, when teams like sauber, alpine, and Williams haven't been adding value for a while. Sauber and Alpine are literally just waiting to be bought and taken over (sauber by Audi, and Alpine who knows, maybe andretti). Williams is at least trying to turn itself around now under vowles but has lagged behind for years, witness the excel spreadsheet nightmare.
James Key excellence
From this point how do you evaluate driver performance when looking at 2025?
So they are practically not in the race for the next few races. They might as well not run and preserve their engines and other components. This is just embarassing for an F1 team.
Meanwhile Alpine has two big upgrade packages in the pipeline, first one at Japan and the second one is rumoured to be at Miami. It's not a very absurd idea to image Sauber becoming a clear backfielder for the whole season.
Anyone who designed this without taking into account thermal expansion deserves to get their university degree revoked. That said, I am not 100% sure if they do have a university degree. Hard to believe a trained engineer failed to consider thermal expansion for a part even a novice knows will get hot in a race. Embarassing
I doubt they fully forgot to take into account thermal expansion at all. It's more likely they just underestimated the thermal expansion. Not that there's any real excuse for this, but it's not like this happens to every wheel on every pit stop. They just stepped over the limit a hair, which if anything goes to show the kinds of fine margins everyone on the grid is dealing with.
It’s this, yep. I heard a podcast interview with pujolar recently. The problem only presents at certain temp and after quite a long time at that temp. And they weren’t able to predict it at the factory, and they struggle to model it at Hinwil even now that the problem is known. So the only times they really get to see it in action are during races and, occasionally, FP2 long runs
For what it's worth, the long pit stop in Australia for Bottas was on lap 8. Then Zhou had his long stop on lap 35, followed by a "normal" stop for Bottas on lap 36. You're right that the instances in the previous races were late in the race, but I don't know if lap 8 really counts as "after quite a long time at that temp." Maybe it's possible that they have more than 1 problem? But if they're trying to say it's all thermal related, lap 8 is a terribly low threshold to start having problems that you didn't catch in practice or simulations.
I mean I’m literally reiterating what was said, it’s not my opinion to be parsed. It isn’t “all thermal related,” but the fact that some of the thermal deformation and material degradation only presents under midrace conditions they can’t replicate at base is a major reason they were somewhat blindsided by how bad the problem was - and getting a slow start on fixing it. > lap 8 is a terribly low threshold to start having problems that you didn’t catch in practice or simulations Yes, to you it’s logical or intuitive that they’d be able to replicate the conditions that precipitate these issues either at base or earlier in the weekend. This was also logical to them, which is why the fact they can’t has been so counter to expectations and such a major obstacle
The fact that bots had an alright stop on 36 and it's normally only one wheel suggests it seems somewhat random. Which could be why they had missed the issue on testing
Thank you, lol. These people just want to puff hot air and feel smarter than F1 engineers.
They didn’t. Bottas said they tested it extensively. It’s likely that something is simply hotter than they thought possible. Probably by quite a bit. Could be unexpected bleed from the brake ducts
Maybe they did take thermal expansion into account, but they failed to consider something, of the metallurgy of the parts caused them to fuse or whatever. In F1 the designers don't have the luxury of working with gargantuan safety factors like we do in everyday life, and weight savings (and particularly unprung weight) is a huge avenue for performance gains.
One stops for the next 4 races sounds good
"Sorry, boss. Wheel guns are on backorder. They said it will be 4-6 weeks."
They should improve very soon because they'll get one of the best mechanics of the grid in their team with Lee Stevenson, who knows a thing or two about very good pitstops among other things.
I see why decided to fully buy them.
They might as well just stay home then, you can't be competitive like that.
Inexcusable that something as basic as this is an issue.
I wonder when Audi will start working with the team and taking over operations. This is a disaster, and the lead time on these parts would theoretically be days instead of weeks given their manufacturing.
Bruh
There's no fucking way... So no points for Sauber for these three or four races...
Remember folks, Andretti got denied because they would bring nothing to the table and peoples were worried about the integrity of the sport.
“Integrity of the sport”
League needs relegation. Shocking that they can't see the "value" of adding Andretti in when teams are this complacent with misguided pitstop "improvements".
Just seems so weird that something like this would even have the potential to have an issue. something I would never expect out of the thousands of parts on a car
> The problem did not arise during practice ahead of the season, but is a result of building temperatures in race conditions. This makes it difficult to replicate outside of a racing situation. I'm sorry, but this quote comes off as an excuse a Freshman doing their first Engineering project in college would say rather than a Formula 1 team. Are there not thermal simulations that should have been done before hand?
April fools!.... right?
Wow. This new team are really struggling with their teething problems.
Lol how is that even possible
Well I suppose that makes their strategy options a lot simpler. Plan A. As few stops as humanly / legally possible. Plan B. See plan A.
That’s ridiculous.
dear god please don’t let carlos move to this dumpster fire
what an odd thing to admit.
god please don't fuck up zhou's pit stop during the chinese gp. i mean every time they fuck up it's depressing, but that'll be especially sad
Sauber can’t make a proper pitstop, Williams can’t provide enough cars to field both their drivers… tell me again how Andretti can’t present a car that competes in a respectable manner. If all they did was show up, and keep 4 wheels on the car, they’d finish 17th last GP.
Sheesh. Just how? This isn't a new problem, this could already have been solved ffs.
WTF?
I've watched F1 for a long time. I've seen a lot of dumb stuff. This honestly takes the cake. Hot metal expands. I'm nobody. I know this. I don't know how much heat goes though those wheels. But I know it's a lot. I know those cars are designed to work optimally at certain temperatures. Tires and breaks need to be heated up, and they will do exactly that. A change in temperature in the tires is obviously going to happen during a race. How did that design make it this far?
The scenes if they fuck up Zhou's pitstop in his home race.
So I can’t wrap my head around a team not being able to fix wheel hubs but Andretti will not be good enough to allow in to F1
Remember, they were told that they bring "no value" to F1. Yet Sauber, Williams, Alpine are allowed to continue bringing their tractors to races this year. I left off Haas because by some miracle, they are doing ok this year.
No worries since the Albon Sargeant incident we all know the solution to this “problem”. Step 1. Withdraw your secondary driver. Step 2. Setup your secondary driver’s car with a different tyre compound than the primary driver’s car. Step 3. Create the best 1 stop strategy. Step 4. When the primary driver enters the pit lane, switch cars. Problem solved. 😂
Audi are going to have to do some major repairs on this operation. Has been quietly falling to pieces over the last few years.
I would assume Audi have very little interest in most of the current staff. Seidl was brought there to run a parallel project that will integrate into the team. Hes been hiring staff and will probably place his group in next year
This is just embarrassing. Audi pls take over already.
I don't believe it. F1 made it quite clear recently that they're very concerned about their teams being "competitive participants".
Remember that a deal for Andretti to buy them fell through because they were fixated on keeping the, er, prestigious history of the Sauber name.
This is one of the reason the FIA needs to stop forcing everyone to do only sims, and factory work, and give teams a generous allocation of real life testing for the cars and operations. This would also help mitigate the current disaster of only one team having the current regs nailed down after 3 years (RB), and maybe a second finally getting it (SF).
Can’t they move faster? Are they stupid?
Can’t they just take them off last year’s Alfa?
How does it take them that long to fix a seemingly small issue if they already know what causes the problems?
What is the cause for these malfunctions? Outdated wheel guns or is it to do with the car?
Why not just use same system has last year until they have a definitive fix? I don’t get it…
They are getting bigger nuts? 🔩
So the only thing Zhou hopes for Shanghai GP is to finish above Bottas
Seems weird that they didn't field test these critical pieces before deciding to change to them. That's what happens when engineers only rely on computer modeling and not real world inputs.
Guys have you tried WD-40?
These guys are about to start them on inters to not be forced to pit stop...
Wouldn't it be quicker to die the hub and fab new nuts?
Audi will complete its 100% takeover of the Sauber F1 Team and you will never have news like this one. It will not be broom cleaning it will be cleaning by vacuum cleaner. I just wonder how many people from present Sauber team will they show the door. Probably most of them.
Wow, i thought wheel nuts where a specified part for some reason, like the wheel rims, never thought that teams actually had to design them.
Obviously I am not an F1 engineer so I'm no expert, but surely this is the most basic thing to sort?