Hamilton Breaks Down As Vettel Tops F1 Testing News

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Hamilton Breaks Down As Vettel Tops F1 Testing

By Daily Sports on February 28, 2020

Lewis Hamilton suffered an engine failure that cut his running to just a handful of laps on the penultimate day of Formula 1 pre-season testing.

The world champion's car had what Mercedes described as “an oil-pressure anomaly, which made the engine shut down as a precautionary measure”.

Investigations into the cause meant Hamilton did not get back out on track.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen had an eventful day, losing control twice to take his spins to six in five days.

Verstappen blamed his own error and the difficult windy conditions for the incidents.

The Dutchman lost control at the chicane and Turn Five and has now had three times as many spins as any other driver in the five days of testing so far.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel also had a spin, but ended the day fastest, despite his off at Turn Five, setting a one minute 16.841 seconds best.

That is still more than a second slower than the fastest time of pre-season so far, set by Hamilton’s team-mate Valtteri Bottas last week.

Headline lap times in pre-season testing are a notoriously unreliable indication of actual competitive form because the teams do not reveal the specifications in which they are running their cars and engine modes, fuel loads and other settings can make a significant difference to lap times.

The high number of spins by Verstappen has raised questions about whether the Red Bull is suffering from an instability on corner entry.

But Verstappen said he had simply not seen a patch of water on the outside of the track when he lost control entering Turn Five.

He said: “I think I just touched the white line and it was still a bit of a damp patch. I didn’t see it in the car but I looked back at the footage and on the onboard afterwards I saw it.” (BBC)

•PHOTO: Lewis Hamilton

Source Daily Sports

Posted February 28, 2020