A truly spectacular image of a Renault in distress, left pontoon in flames, parked on the side of the straight line at the Hungaroring from which a visibly frightened Nick Heidfeld escapes. A misadventure that had already happened to the German driver during free practice at the Spanish Grand Prix, although it did not reach the severity of what happened last Sunday since an explosion followed this fire. The Enstone team has had to resign itself to abandon the chassis: \u00ab The incident is highly damaging as it forces us to consider this chassis as unusable \u00bb, stated James Allison, technical director of LRGP.<\/p>\n
\u00ab We will take measures before the next race to reduce the likelihood of a fire and to ensure that the air cylinder cannot overheat \u00bb; indeed, an internal investigation has shown that this oxygen bottle, which supplies the engine valves, was the cause of the explosion. \u00ab We are in contact with the FIA to provide them with a full report of the incident and also to explain the measures that will be implemented to prevent a new issue \u00bb, added the Briton.<\/p>\n
For Allison, the explanation of this phenomenon remains more complex: As with most accidents, several combined incidents led to this fire. First, we chose a slightly different strategy for engine mapping during qualifications, which resulted in greater than normal exhaust overheating. We believe this high temperature caused a crack in the exhaust pipe.<\/p>\n
\u00ab We assume that the crack then propagated during the race up until the pit stop\u2014it wasn’t apparent to us because we thought this crack occurred upstream of the location where our temperature sensor is installed. We believe that Nick returned with a partially failing exhaust. The stop lasted longer than usual, with the engine running at high revs for 6.3 seconds while waiting for the tire change to be completed. Under these conditions, a lot of fuel accumulated in the exhausts, which were at a temperature around 100\u00b0C. This rise in temperature was enough to completely finish off the cracked exhaust, and the fire started under the bodywork \u00bb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following the incident involving Nick Heidfeld’s R31, the British team confirms that the chassis will be unusable. James Allison also discusses the reasons for this problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":42345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[1096],"class_list":["post-21397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-heidfeld"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n