FIA race director Charlie Whiting has revealed one possible solution that could be considered to try and prevent the recent spate of pit-stop incidents.
In Australia, both Haas cars left the pits with loose wheels during the race, as did Stoffel Vandoorne in practice last weekend in Shanghai. But it was the broken leg suffered by Ferrari mechanic Francesco Cigorini in Bahrain after being run over by Kimi Raikkonen which caused the most concern.
Formula 1’s governing body has said an investigation will be conducted with solutions put forward to teams, but a dual-sensor system used by some which monitor both the torque in the wheelguns and the potential cross-threading is attracting interest.
“So, you’re using two sensors to tell the operator it’s actually done up, he presses a button, both jacks drop and the car goes,” Whiting said putting the concept in simpler terms.
“I think we can introduce a few things to improve, to decrease the likelihood of mistakes,” he added to Motorsport.com, speaking more broadly.
“I think we have learned something. We need to again analyse things to ensure that what we do, we do it precisely to make sure everyone is able to follow that.”
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The most extreme solution would be to completely standardise the pit-stop procedure for every team, but the veteran FIA official didn’t see that as necessary.
“We need to make sure that among other things there is no possibility for the guy to give the OK until those two conditions have been met,” he claimed
