FIA race director Charlie Whiting has confirmed the governing body is to launch an investigation after the spate of pit-stop incidents so far in 2018.
In Australia, both Haas cars were released with one wheel unattached while both drivers ran in the top six, costing them a huge haul of points and then, on Sunday in Bahrain, Kimi Raikkonen left his box after one wheel had failed to come off his Ferrari, breaking the leg of a mechanic in the process.
With teams constantly developing new systems and designs to achieve faster pit-stops, Whiting is now going to dig deeper on the matter with the Briton also aware that the two teams impacted share the same equipment.
“It’s looking like less and less like a coincidence but the two incidences in Melbourne were quite clearly wheelgun operator error,” he explained on Thursday. “They cross threaded the nuts and thought it was tight, came off and then realised a little too late it wasn’t.
“[With the incident in Bahrain], the guy hadn’t even taken the wheel off, which is slightly perplexing.”
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After being criticised for his reaction to what happened last Sunday, Kimi Raikkonen has now commented on Ferrari’s pit-stop procedures and his words are far from endorsing.
“I think a lot of things are questionable,” said the Finn. “We are always trying to gain on everything, but unfortunately it was far from ideal, and the end result was one of our guys got hurt, but my only job is to follow the lights and go when it’s green.
“There are probably a lot of things that could’ve been done differently, but this is what happened, and we paid the price for it.
“I don’t think it’s anything to do with luck; it’s purely things that we have to improve on. It’s disappointing obviously to have that early in the season such a bad result.”