Mercedes on crash after safety car: “Bottas did everything correctly”
F1 News
- GPblog.com
It was perhaps the most startling moment of the race at Mugello; the massive crash after the first safety car. Nicholas Latifi, Kevin Magnussen, Antonio Giovinazzi and Carlos Sainz were the victims. In any case, according to Mercedes, Valtteri Bottas did nothing wrong.
In the Mercedes debrief on YouTube, James Vowles discusses the accident in question. "The problem is that it’s an over-kilometre straight towards the first corner. The earlier Valtteri goes for it, the longer the straight will be and therefore the higher the impact of the tow," said Mercedes' Chief Strategist. "As you saw at the start and also at the restarts, the car in the lead wasn’t necessarily the car with an advantage, the cars behind in their tow gained huge amounts of distance up until turn one.”
That's why Bottas wanted to go on the gas as late as possible, to make the straight as short as possible. "Valtteri did everything correctly, but when the pack is this tightly condensed it becomes difficult to find your own space and know what you’re reacting to. They couldn’t see Valtteri at the front and they won’t know when he had reacted and gone. When they saw the slightest movement from the cars just in front of them, they interpreted that as the pack going and therefor went full throttle, crashing into each other”, Vowles explains the crash.