If you’re taking part in a Formula 1 race and reaching a speed of 220 mph (354 km/h), the last thing you want is for parts of the car to fall off while you’re driving, or more importantly, for you to suffer nerve damage due to a problem with your vehicle.
But that’s exactly what’s happening with Aston Martin’s car, making it unlikely that drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll will finish the first race of the new F1 season in Australia on Sunday.
During tests, the car, powered by a Honda engine, vibrated so much that parts of it gave way and the vibrations reached the drivers.
The problem emerged as teams adapted to new engine rules intended to increase efficiency and sustainability – a change that has required widespread redesigns in recent months.
While Honda supplies the power units that may be contributing to the vibration problem, Aston Martin’s chassis design and configuration influences how the vibrations reach drivers, making it a problem rooted in both engine performance and vehicle design.
Engineers have been working to reduce vibrations but it seems unlikely that Alonso and Stroll will be able to finish the race on Sunday.
“Those vibrations in the chassis lead to some reliability issues,” Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey told media on Thursday, adding that the problem included “mirrors falling off and taillights falling off.”
Newey said: “The much bigger problem is that the vibration is ultimately transmitted to the driver’s fingers. So Fernando (Alonso) feels he can’t do more than 25 laps in a row before risking permanent nerve damage to his hands. Lance (Stroll) feels he can’t do more than 15 laps before that limit.”
Regarding the unusual situation on Thursday, Alonso said: “Everything vibrates for us. But it’s not just us that the car shrugs its shoulders a little. The vibrations coming from the engine do a little damage to the components in the car and the drivers; we feel them, we feel our body a little numb with this vibration frequency that you feel after 20 or 25 minutes.”
It’s certainly a bizarre turn of events. While there have been cases in the past of F1 drivers racing in an uncomfortable condition, this appears to be the first time a team has had to abandon a race due to health risks caused by vibrations.
