Toto Wolff thinks the FIA needs to react to the series of suspension failures seen on Saturday at the Austrian Grand Prix, with the Mercedes motorsport boss calling for an overhaul of the kerbing system.
F1 points leader Nico Rosberg crashed out of FP3 after suffering a spectacular rear suspension issue that led to his taking a new gearbox along with a five-place grid penalty.
Force India’s Sergio Perez then pulled out of qualifying over similar concerns before Daniil Kvyat’s Toro Rosso went off in the final sequence of corners following yet another suspension failure.
There has already been a lot of talk about the yellow ‘sausage’ kerbs that have been added as deterrents beyond the regular red kerbs in some places, but Wolff, who has been in contact with FIA race director Charlie Whiting, urges the governing body to review the entire system.
“I don’t know what the FIA is going to decide, whether they are going to take those sausage kerbs away or whether they are going to modify some of the red kerbs, stretch them, or fill them with concrete,” he said.
“I don’t know but we’ve seen a couple of failures on various cars on various suspension designs and it’s still failing, I think there needs to be a reaction.
“We discussed it during the session actually that we need to react quickly and trigger some reaction, but that is not an easy one.”
Mercedes did manage to repair Rosberg’s car in time for qualifying all the while strengthening his W07’s rear suspension, but Wolff admits the failure is “a concern”.
“The strange thing is at the beginning it seemed that we had spikes of loads, but once we analysed it there was not much load on the suspension. So it is some kind of strange frequency, oscillation on the tyre which makes the suspension break, we don’t know what it is.
“It looks like it’s the red kerbs that are new, which triggers that, so no answers here. Like Nico said we strengthened the suspension, whether it’s the ultimate cure, I doubt it.”
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