FIA blames "unprecedented" mix of factors for Sepang formation lap power loss
Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari was crawling round Sepang while the rest of the field went past it. That was the moment the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia stopped being a rain delay and became something the FIA had to explain.
The governing body has now done so. In a statement released after the race, it said that on the formation lap "an unprecedented combination of low engine speed, low-grip conditions, wet-weather energy management settings and the Sepang circuit's sector configuration led to an unintended loss of power for a number of cars."
The race had already been pushed back by 40 minutes when heavy rain hit the circuit shortly before the 3pm start. When the field finally set off behind the safety car, Hamilton, Max Verstappen and Audi's Gabriel Bortoleto were among those who lost power.
Race control suspended the start procedure and threw the red flag, and the cars returned to the pit lane. The race eventually got under way at 4:40pm local time, an hour and 40 minutes behind schedule.
The statement sets out what the FIA did in the gap. Its technical department "removed the energy limit constraint in the affected sectors" through an updated software release sent to every competitor during the delay, which let the teams change their power units before the start.
The problem hit cars with Ferrari, Red Bull and Audi power units, which is why the FIA described it as affecting a number of cars rather than one team.
It also admitted that nobody saw this coming. The issue "had not been detected by the FIA or the teams during testing or during the laps to the grid", the statement said. FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis explained at the circuit that cars bunched up behind the slow-moving field and some "almost stopped completely".
He said a bug in the software then stopped those cars redeploying power and getting back up to speed. Tombazis also acknowledged that the code had not been tested for running at such low speeds before it made its debut under the new regulations.
For the teams, there was a clear upside to the timing. Had the fault appeared mid-race rather than on the formation lap, a single affected car would simply have been retired. With so many cars hit at once, the start was abandoned and everyone got a second go.
Verstappen, whose own Red Bull lost power before the original start, went on to win the race from pole. The FIA says it will carry out a full review with the teams and power unit manufacturers. The statement gave no timeline for it.
Comments