Frightening Half Shaft Failure Halts Today's Test

By Jamie Makin
June 2 2004

Felipe Massa had only completed 23 laps of testing today when a half shaft broke on his car. It occured at top speed but Felipe was able to hang onto the car and avoid a serious crash. The team ended the test early to investigate the problem and repair the car.

Race Engineer, Giampaolo Dall´Ara spoke about the incident, "A problem with a drive shaft caused damage to the left rear suspension. This incident occurred when Felipe was approaching the first chicane, however, he was able to keep control of the car. We decided to interrupt the test today. We are now doing a thorough analysis in order to understand the exact reason and plan to continue our test programme tomorrow."

The lack of track time left Massa with the worst time of the day's seven runners at 1:23.229. Worse is the fact that Sauber have now lost a huge amount of time due to today's failure and yesterday afternoon's rain showers. Giancarlo Fisichella will take over driving tomorrow and Friday, and the team will work extra hard to catch up on their test programme.

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