Jenson Button finished second in the German Grand Prix last weekend, however while this may have been classed as a brilliant result in most events, it was far from where they should have ended up at the end of the day. Many believe that the young Brit would have secured his first victory of his F1 career if not for a ten place demotion on Sunday’s grid.
But, that’s not all, in fact, it was far from being anywhere near the perfect weekend for the British American Racing team starting with the opening day when they suffered a technical infringement with the FIA. As our spies in Hockenheim reported, two of the team’s three contenders were fitted with two shafts in the front suspension, connecting the brakes with a differential. The system stopped the inside wheel from locking, which in theory allowed the driver to brake deeper into the corners.
In fact, Benetton ran a similar system back in 1999 but, as it weighed 9 kilograms and reacted too slowly, they gave up on it. They had used a visco clutch to distribute the brake power to the two front wheels and the same year Ferrari queried the FIA about whether it would be allowed to use an electro-hydraulic valve instead. The answer was no.
Meanwhile, BAR asked the FIA in May this year if they could have authorization for their new system, however they forgot to tell the sports governing body that they were controlling the brake power by an electro-hydraulic device. Once the FIA discovered this in Hockenheim, they told the Brackley based squad that they had to run without the system, which by the way now only weighs 4 kilograms.
“A totally mechanical system would be okay, but BAR was infringing article 11.1.3,“ Charlie Whiting said.
This article states, that you are not allowed to add any additions to the brake system so for BAR, five months of development with a cost of 200 000 dollars went down the drain in an instant.
;)
