Sebastian Vettel suffered a suspected mechanical failure during Wednesday morning’s test session at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Vettel, at the wheel of Ferrari’s SF90 for the morning session on Wednesday, appeared to suffer a mechanical failure on the left front of the car as he negotiated the long, fast right hander Turn 3.
Managing to slow the car, he was powerless to stop the car from going in nose-first into the barriers. While he clambered out, the session was red-flagged for almost half an hour as Vettel was brought to the medical centre for precautionary checks.
Ferrari have since confirmed that their driver is uninjured but they will be forced to lose significant track time due to the incident. Vettel was due to hand over to Charles Leclerc at lunchtime, but Ferrari are yet to confirm the cause of the crash or when they expect to be able to get back out on track.
“We don’t know much more than everyone else,” Vettel said as he spoke to reporters at the circuit.
“By the feeling of it, there was an issue at the front-left corner [of the car] and, from there, there wasn’t anything that I could’ve done to avoid the impact. After that I wasn’t in control any more and I went straight into the barriers.
“We are flat out trying to understand it. It would’ve been a lot easier if there was a lot of run-off and the car didn’t hit anything right afterwards because, due to the hit, we have other damage.
“We have to be very careful in understanding what happened, and it’s what everybody here is looking at.”
We are foreseeing the car won’t go out on track for a few hours. #SF90 #F1Testing #essereFerrari
— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) February 27, 2019
More to follow..
