This is the second time Valtteri Bottas has lost a T-Wing from his Mercedes but this time the damaged caused was enough to prompt an appeal from Red Bull boss, Christian Horner, to have the wings banned due to safety reasons.
“I am probably the wrong person to be asking because we don’t have one, so everybody is going to say we want to get rid of it because we don’t have one,” Horner said.
“But I think Charlie, if he so wished, has the perfect opportunity under the grounds of safety to get rid of them.
“Today it did about £50,000 of damage so I think they should be banned on grounds of safety and cost – it has destroyed the floor and a bargeboard.
“But I feel that they will probably be here for the rest of the year.”
Fans who aren’t keen for the T-Wing have often stated that all we need is a wing to fall off to have the FIA’s Charlie Whiting to ban them but so far, no ban has come even though this is the second incident. Is it dangerous? It could be according to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen who it the errant wing.
“I didn’t expect it would cause that much damage,” said Verstappen. “It smashed basically the floor.”
Let’s be honest, no one wants to spend £50,000 due to someone else’s dodgy T-Wing and perhaps an invoice to Toto Wolff net 10 could be a way of recouping your loss but in bigger matters, these small, aerodynamic wings could be dangerous. Horner doesn’t see them going anywhere and as they add 3-4 points of aero, they may not but one of the reasons for the HALO device debate is to protect drivers from flying debris. One way you can prevent that is to prevent wings that have shown a proclivity to become flying debris.
Hat Tip: Autosport
Photo by: www.kymillman.com/F1
Cable has been around for 20+ years, why are they going back to antenna?
I hate to admit it, but I think I agree with Horner. The t-wing is an accident waiting to happen. It doesn’t take much to send a fragment of a broken t-wing a couple hundred feet into the stands. Remember the front wing troubles IndyCar had at St. Petersburg a couple of years ago when a fragment went airborne and struck a fan. Formula 1 is setting themselves up for a similar type of incident.
I very much agree, even if it leaves the teams who run the T-wings out in the cold. To have two incidents in the first 3 races is enough of a trend to deem them a safety hazard.
After TW failure, ban them.
After FW failure, ban them.
After a turbo failure, ban them.
Driver ends-up in the wall, ban drivers.
Also if someone drowns, ban water.
How about banning big loud mouths like the spiceman?.
Hi Salvu, I agree, it’s way too early to consider banning the T wings. The engineers are just testing the limits of how light the attachments can be. They’ll soon figure it out, and by the time we get to Europe t-wing failures will be a thing of the past.
The front wings on the other hand, they’ll remain vulnerable to damage in collisions, and throw alot more debris into the air and around the track. Let’s ban, or at least restrict, them first.
Everyone should get on the YouTubes and check out this video on T-Wings. this guy is a thoroughly educated aerodynamicist with a background in the aerospace industry. This guy isn’t just talking smack either, he actually bought time on a supercomputer to run a model through CFD software to have some data to look at that supports his diagnosis of what’s happening on this years cars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ-xdo8Ebzg&t=423s I found it to be interesting in that, quite a few of the TV commentators got the function of the T-Wing wrong…. Kyle also did a well done video on the shark fin,… Read more »