Why Valtteri Bottas deliberately hit the wall in Cadillac incident

Valtteri Bottas has revealed his Cadillac’s brake lines burned through during his dramatic Hungarian Grand Prix retirement, leaving him without brakes in the pit lane.

Bottas suffered what could’ve been a scary retirement at the Hungarian Grand Prix when a fire burnt through his Cadillac’s brake lines, leaving him without brakes as he drove down the pit lane. The Finn had to use the wall to slow his Cadillac.

Valtteri Bottas explains Cadillac brake failure in Hungary

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Cadillac has suffered a string of brake fires across the first half of the season, as the team has battled overheating brakes.

F1 brakes, which hit extreme temperatures exceeding 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, are cooled by the brake ducts sucking in air that is distributed over the various parts of the braking system.

The team has suffered several brake fires, notably in Austria where both cars were forced to retire, prompting Cadillac to introduce new front brake ducts for the MAC-26 at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The FIA upgrade note read: “The front brake duct surfaces have been revised to increase the area available at both the airflow inlet and outlet. This allows a greater volume of air to pass through the ducts and provides additional brake-cooling capacity.”

That, though, wasn’t enough to help Bottas.

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On a sweltering-hot day with the track temperature reaching 55°C, the Finn pulled into the pits on Lap 15 to retire his car, his left front brake on fire.

Worryingly, he had to use the pit lane wall to slow his car as he lost his brakes.

“That new front ducting was trying to address this issue and trying to prevent it from happening, but clearly we still need more airflow in the brakes,” he told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media in Budapest.

“That’s clear. But it was quite extreme conditions [and an] extreme track.

“The brakes, they get too hot, and it gets to the point that inside everything starts to burn, and that obviously destroys everything.

“And actually, on the in-lap, I lost the brakes fully because I think the brake lines must have burned. So that’s why I had to stop the car against the wall.”

Although the 10-time Grand Prix winner is not expecting any upgrades from Cadillac when F1 returns from its summer break with the Dutch Grand Prix, he is hoping that something more will be done about the brakes.

“I don’t think we have anything for Zandvoort,” he said. “Well, hopefully something with the brakes, but nothing performance-related.

“So yeah, working on it, but at some point there’s going to be a point that we’re going to focus 100% for next year.”

Cadillac has yet to score a point in its debut campaign, with Bottas’ P13 at the Japanese Grand Prix its best result.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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