Hamilton quickest – then breaks down

2014 British Grand Prix second practice

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Lewis Hamilton led another Mercedes one-two during practice at Silverstone – before his car broke down.

There was half an hour of the session remaining when Hamilton’s car came to a stop moment after he left the pit lane with an apparent engine failure. Earlier in the session he had also been advised of a failure on his brake-by-wire system.

Before that he used the medium tyres to set the fastest time of the session with a 1’34.508. After that he improved his time through the first sector of the lap – where he had been told he’d lost time to Rosberg – before backing off and returning to the pits.

Rosberg’s best effort was two-tenths of a second slower, which put him half a second ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari. The two Red Bulls were next, Daniel Ricciardo a tenth of a second ahead of Sebastian Vettel.

Hamilton was one of three drivers who came to a stop on the track during the session. Jean-Eric Vergne brought his Toro Rosso to an immediate halt when his front-left wheel began to part ways with his cars in Abbey. Toro Rosso immediately called in the other car of Daniil Kvyat to check for the same fault.

Marcus Ericsson also suffered a problem in his Caterham. He pulled off into the old pit lane after a failure which left him with damaged bodywork around his engine.

A similar fate befell Valtteri Bottas, whose engine cover broke off on the Hangar straight. The Williams team had repaired his car following the oil pressure problem which ended Susie Wolff’s run in it during the morning session.

Felipe Massa was also able to get going again following his heavy crash in practice. However as the chequered flag appeared at the end of the second session he reported a loss of power in his Williams.

Pos.No.DriverCarBest lapGapLaps
144Lewis HamiltonMercedes1’34.50814
26Nico RosbergMercedes1’34.7360.22835
314Fernando AlonsoFerrari1’35.2440.73632
43Daniel RicciardoRed Bull-Renault1’35.5111.00311
51Sebastian VettelRed Bull-Renault1’35.6271.11927
677Valtteri BottasWilliams-Mercedes1’36.0161.50833
722Jenson ButtonMcLaren-Mercedes1’36.2281.72034
820Kevin MagnussenMcLaren-Mercedes1’36.2991.79135
97Kimi RaikkonenFerrari1’36.5542.04629
1025Jean-Eric VergneToro Rosso-Renault1’36.5832.07526
1119Felipe MassaWilliams-Mercedes1’36.6712.16329
1226Daniil KvyatToro Rosso-Renault1’36.7782.27031
1321Esteban GutierrezSauber-Ferrari1’36.9512.44335
1413Pastor MaldonadoLotus-Renault1’37.0642.55635
158Romain GrosjeanLotus-Renault1’37.0972.58933
1611Sergio PerezForce India-Mercedes1’37.2362.72837
1727Nico HulkenbergForce India-Mercedes1’37.4492.94127
1899Adrian SutilSauber-Ferrari1’37.5203.01225
1917Jules BianchiMarussia-Ferrari1’38.6584.15011
2010Kamui KobayashiCaterham-Renault1’39.0684.56031
214Max ChiltonMarussia-Ferrari1’39.2244.71628
229Marcus EricssonCaterham-Renault1’39.7625.25421

Image © Daimler/Hoch Zwei

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Keith Collantine
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36 comments on “Hamilton quickest – then breaks down”

  1. Why Button wears “japanish” colour helmet?

    1. He’s wearing pink in tribute of his late father, who was famous for wearing pink shirts @slava

      1. Thanks for the info, I didn’t think of that.

  2. ZOMG I CAN’T BELIEVE MERCEDES SABOTAGED HAMILTON YET AGAIN ROSBERG ONLY WINS WHEN HE CHEATS

    *sarcasm*

    1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      4th July 2014, 16:09

      It’s only sarcasm when it’s not entirely true – this is just ridiculous, he’s going into the race with a car that’s had 2 fatal issues (3 if you include quali in Austria). it’s like Federer or Djokovic heading into Wimbledon wondering if his racket will break and he will DNF the tournament while his opponent’s racket has never broken over 8 races…

      Rosberg might win because he had a racket in most tournaments. I’m sure Merc is advising to stay off the throttle and off the brakes as much as he can. And make sure you beat Rosberg and that phenomenal racket of his while you are going as slow as you can.

      1. When did Hamilton have a “fatal issue” in Qualifying in Australia. And do you even know the meaning of ‘fatal’? If Hamilton even had one ‘fatal’ accident/failure, he wouldn’t even live to tell the tale!

        1. *I meant Austria. Damn.

      2. Plot twist: Ferrari are sabotaging Hamilton’s car, because Alonso has to finish ahead of his former teammate.

      3. Only issue Hamilton had in Austria quali was himself, nothing technical. It was even confirmed by Merc themselves.

        1. Well not quite: actually not ‘himself,’ but an unfortunate coincidence of braking later than previous laps, precisely where there was a raise in the track, causing loss of traction.

          1. Too fine a distinction for me to process.

          2. He braked 8m too late. He cost himself and Rosberg pole.

          3. Wolff: “I think it was also bad luck. He was braking 10 metres later, he had a little bit more pressure on the brake pedal, and he hit a bump.”

          4. And that means himself, because he tried to brake later and failed it. You can’t really blame the track, or otherwise that could be the case always with errors “Oh the track made it harder, wasn’t like I wanted at that braking point so I lost it” or something similar. All knew about the bumb, all knew the risks of braking later, on the “bump”.

  3. Sebastian, You need to eat more magic beans to get on top of that Australian kid.

    1. In fairness, Vettel’s long run looked very good.

      Though Daniel didn’t have much of a long run, so we can’t draw a comparison there.

  4. If these times are indicative of what we’ll get race day it’s going to be a tough run for anybody not in a Merc. Here’s hoping that Ham and Ros break down at some point and we see a little variety on the podium (like in Montreal).

    1. It’s sad that for to get that we need to hope that both mercedes break down isn’t?

  5. This headline could almost be the season summary ;)

    1. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      4th July 2014, 16:12

      Ha-ha – very true:)

    2. stefano bondani
      4th July 2014, 23:35

      cotd

  6. What on Earth happened to Bottas’ car?! The BBC coverage said there was a small explosion, and James Allen was quoted as saying he’d never seen anything like it in F1 before!

    Not a good day for Williams :-(

    1. Looked like just the engine cover coming a bit loose, nothing explosion-y in my eyes.

      1. @kaiie

        True. The only reason it looked ‘explosion-y’ is because Bottas was travelling very fast at the time.
        So when pieces fly off, they appear to fly off fast (akin to the projectile speed of an explosion).

    2. I hear rumours of turbo failures on his and Ericsson’s cars. A bit scary from a safety point of view.

  7. will hamiltons engine failure require a replacement and grid penalty?

    1. Mostly for Friday team wont install a Race engine so i don’t think there would be any but for sure he will have one less engine if the engine blown today and unable to get into Working condition

  8. Gideon Hadi (@)
    4th July 2014, 16:26

    if Fernando keep this momentum through Qualifying and Race , I’m quite confident that Ferrari will get their second podium in this season, well it is quite unlikely.

    1. Ferrari is always fast on Fridays. There is no reason to believe that they will challenge for podium on Sunday.

  9. Paddy Lowe has said the engine needs replacing but that is normal procedure for Friday afternoon as all cars only use their designated 5 engines on Saturdays and Sundays.
    Shame about the lack of running for Lewis, the Silverstone crowd go nuts for him!

    1. Michael Brown
      4th July 2014, 16:51

      I didn’t know they could do that.

    2. They don’t go nuts for Chilton? Go Max, go!

  10. Come on, this is getting silly. It’s about time car #6 felt some pain.

  11. I don’t know what went wrong with FI, off late they have not been performing up to their capability in practices and then spring a surprise in the race!

    1. @hemzshaw their practice is fine, they just don’t seem to be doing quick runs for qualifying until FP3 and instead opt to do long runs. This becomes more obvious when we see the past few races where they have probably the best long run strategy out there. They are probably trying to figure out some sort of strategy to leap frog the competition as they’ve been doing. Though it wont help much if it rains.

  12. Sauber cars are not too fast…

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