Lewis Hamilton’s crash in second practice began when he lost control on one of the new kerbs at the Hungaroring, according to Mercedes’ Paddy Lowe.
“The most important thing is that Lewis was unharmed despite the impact. These cars are very stiff and very strong in a pure lateral load, so he went to the medical centre for assessment after a high G-Force reading from the accident data recorder – but luckily the tyre barrier took most of the energy out of the impact.”
The damage to the car was limited to “suspension and a few bodywork elements” said Lowe, “but this will be easily fixed overnight”
Hamilton apologised to his crew after the crash, “for all the hard work they have ahead to strip the car and get it back together”.
“Fortunately I got a good feel for it in the few laps that I did have and the pace is clearly there,” he added. “Hopefully tomorrow I can make up for the time lost today during the morning session and come back strongly in qualifying.”
MarkM
22nd July 2016, 16:29
He’s only human, it happens to the best of them, he’ll bounce back tomorrow. The key is to keep these instances to when it doesn’t matter the most, you don’t want that happening in the race.
altitude2k
22nd July 2016, 16:33
On the plus side, that’s a decent chunk of running time he’s saved on that engine.
DaveW (@dmw)
22nd July 2016, 16:39
Ha. But I’m guessing it was one their old, ratty “Friday engines” that would never see a Q3 or a race.
sunny stivala
22nd July 2016, 22:23
same with his gearbox
Gren
22nd July 2016, 21:07
It’s a shame that due to licencing restrictions we are not able to see more than a stock photo from a fan site that is more than willing to promote the sport going forward.
machinesteve
23rd July 2016, 9:23
Yet again the revolting tarmac run-off fetish has shown that it doesn’t work. So long as there is no braking effect (ie. going sideways, broken wheels/brakes or unconsciousness) the tarmac just maintains the speed of the car. Gravel works in every situation, looks better (especially on TV) and punishes errors.
Nikos
23rd July 2016, 12:16
I agree that tarmac does not punish errors, but there are many cases where gravel is quite dangerous. Look at how the car behaved when it entered the gravel in Alonso’s crash in Australia for example.