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Williams Martini
driver Felipe Massa would suffer an engine issue in qualifying for the 2015
Canadian Grand Prix which would see him repeatedly oin the radio to his team
saying that he had no power in the engine. It was later revealed by
team performance chief Rob Smedley that this was down to a fixing within the
wastegate of the Mercedes engine failing.
This failure
would see Felipe finish in seventeenth, while his team-mate Valtteri Bottas
completed what he described as his "best lap of the weekend" to qualify
fourth.
Smedley said: "It was a fixing within the wastegate mechanism of the
turbocharger that failed, so it will be changed for tomorrow.
"It effectively meant in very simple terms he just didn't have any power.
"It was very difficult to charge the battery as well from the hybrid system
from the MGU-H.
"So effectively we were just missing lots of power and couldn't do anything
about it."
Smedley does not think Mercedes had had this problem before and added the
team plans to replace the part without taking a penalty as per the
regulations.
"We're replacing like for like and we're replacing it for reliability
reasons," he said.
"Clearly we can do that under parc ferme, as long as we get permission from
the FIA that's allowed under parc ferme and that will give us no further
ramifications."
Massa added: "These things can happen, when there is a technical problem you
cannot do anything.
"We just change what needs to be changed and tomorrow is another day.
"It was going to be a good qualifying for us, the car was competitive, maybe
we could have both cars in the top five but we just have one.
"But overtaking is possible and I hope we can do many tomorrow." |
