Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsWilliams

Rear wing to blame for Massa crash

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Williams says a rear wing stall was to blame for Felipe Massa crashing during second practice for the Chinese Grand Prix.

Massa lost the rear of his Williams under braking for the Turn 14 hairpin, sliding sideways at high speed and just brushing the wall with his front wing, which broke and wedged under the car. A red flag was required to allow marshals to remove Massa’s car, but the team has since traced the issue to a problem with the rear wing.

“We completed the majority of our plan today, unfortunately we didn’t get all the data we would have liked to due to Felipe’s spin in the second session,” head of vehicle performance Rob Smedley said. “The spin was caused by a rear wing stall which was easy to rectify so we were confident when sending Valtteri [Bottas] back out.”

Massa himself says he will need to make up for lost time during the final practice session on Saturday morning.

“The first session went to plan, but this afternoon we had a few issues with the rear wing,” Massa said. “Under braking I lost all grip in the rear tyres and as a result the car spun which put me out for the rest of the session. We lost a lot of time, but the team made the changes to Valtteri’s rear wing so the same wouldn’t happen to him. We need to have a strong day tomorrow to set ourselves up well for the race.”

By Chris Medland in Shanghai

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.