planetf1.com

Here’s Ted with more on Hamilton’s accident: “I’m just back from the garage, where they were attracting attention of the wrong sorts. There’s not too much damage: the front wing snapped off at the nose pillars and the car had picked up a fair bit of gravel. But both front wheels were still attached to the car. That’s damage that can be repaired fairly quickly, but obviously Mercedes will want to know the cause. The one thing we do know is that the car didn’t make the corner, so was it brake failure? It seems unlikely as there were skid marks on the track, but we don’t know if they only came from the front or the rear, so there could have been a mechanical problem. If not, could it have been that Lewis was caught out by the braking characteristics of his new car? Maybe the rear locked up; maybe it was a KERS charging quirk and he got less engine braking than the previous lap. We’ll let you know as soon as the team confirm. It’s all part of learning about a new car in testing.”

Yeah, many of them look like a handfull (surprise, surprise it's testing). The other one is Williams.

Torro Rosso looks like they have improved. They should be a good challenge to the middle order.

If i was schumacher i'd be at home doing whatever i wanted with my fortune

I think someone needs to add a bit more gravel, or at least loosen up the stuff there, it looks like it just acted as a less than effective road

Some "non-reliable" reports from the track saying that the Force India looks like its a handful, Ferrari and McLaren handling well but the Red Bull looks planted to the road.

SO its not just going to be a case of stick a new nose on and go back out. They will have to fix the brake failure meaning another day lost for merc

Not to worry, at his first McLaren F1 test LH completely wrecked the car, so this is his best-ever start at an F1 team.

tedkravitz: Hamilton's rear brake failure will take quite a bit of time to investigate and repair, don't expect him to be back out anytime soon

That's if it really was a brake failure, it's probably true but sometimes teams save the driver embarrassment by claiming a technical fault.

That's if it really was a brake failure, it's probably true but sometimes teams save the driver embarrassment by claiming a technical fault.

How do you know?

Why do you dismiss the possibility of an actual brake failure?

day 1: the car is on fire after 11 laps
day 2: the brakes fail after 15 laps

I'm really happy that Michael got off the Mercedes circus...

That is one ugly looking car.

That's if it really was a brake failure, it's probably true but sometimes teams save the driver embarrassment by claiming a technical fault.

What makes you so certain of that?

Did you secretly install some telemetry in his car and see whether it was him braking too late?

My goodness Grosjean seems to be fast and consistent, gone into the 1.18's to set the fastest lap so far and is doing longer runs in the 1.19's, I will be very interested to see how Kimi fares with the E21.

So maybe Lotus is the team to look at?