Kerbs contributed to Maldonado’s retirement

2015 Belgian Grand Prix

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Lotus believe Pastor Maldonado’s retirement was triggered by heavy contact with the kerbs at Spa-Francorchamps.

Maldonado’s car slowed suddenly on the third lap of the race as he accelerated out of Raidillon.

“We haven’t looked at everything on Pastor’s car yet but we know there was a big excursion over the kerbs which appears to have caused some damage to the power box,” said the team’s technical director Nick Chester, “so a big shame as he should also have achieved a strong result here”.

Maldonado was running ahead of team mate Romain Grosjean, who went on to finish third, at the time of his retirement.

“The car was feeling very good, very competitive and I had a good race start,” said Maldonado. “We had an issue with the drive of the car which the team are investigating.”

“I’m disappointed about the issue we had today but that’s racing sometimes. We are keeping focussed for the next race now and Romain has shown what is possible. I love Italy and Monza so I’ll be doing everything I can for a strong result there.”

2015 Belgian Grand Prix

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    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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    10 comments on “Kerbs contributed to Maldonado’s retirement”

    1. They need to do something about Radillion. So many slo-mo replays clearly showed cars going totally inside the white lines and obviously gaining time but FIA turn a blind eye.

      1. They even removed the metal strip because it might be dangerous…

        They should just put grass there. The current situation is a joke… Of course it’s easy to take the corner flat-out if you cut the corner every time…

      2. I think part of the problem is the width of the kerb, the coloured part is about the same width if not wider than the car, so it doesn’t really give you anything to aim for. It’s tough there because anything that upsets the car balance can cause a huge accident as it’s already low grip because of the crest.

    2. I think that’s a given. As it happened I was watching and said ‘He’s cut Radillon far too much there and whacked the kerbs.’ You could almost see it happen.

      In fact, I even tweeted Crofty just after stating this exact point…

    3. Less messy than Force India’s kerb problems in Hungary, I guess…

    4. Key question is whether we can now say that Maldonado crashed today.

    5. The kerbs felt the full force of Maldonado today… And the kerbs won.

    6. The article should read “Maldonado contributed to Maldonado’s retirement – again”

    7. Maldonado needs to write a book on how not to drive an f1 car.

    8. see 9:25 in this video for proof https://vimeo.com/137422184

    Comments are closed.