Nico Rosberg’s day was destroyed in the first corner, when he made contact with his teammate, and then later in the race when he suffered a rear puncture and needed to pit for new tyres. The team has also revealed that Rosberg was receiving warnings on his steering wheel about overheating. With the temperature of the area so low, it is strange to hear of a car overheating, but Paddy Lowe explains the cause.
With track temperatures of less than 15C, the air was considerably cooler than it usually is a Grand Prix. So when Nico Rosberg was on team radio complaining about warning screens on his steering wheel telling him that he was overheating, fans were more than a little confused as to why this is happening.
It’s no secret that Mercedes has grown accustomed to running at the front of the field over the past couple of seasons, meaning that their car has been designed to run in front of the other cars. This means that their car doesn’t perform the best when they are stuck behind traffic. This means that their aerodynamics suffer in turbulent air and that their cooling system hasn’t really been designed to deal with traffic.
The fact that Mercedes struggles behind other cars doesn’t seem to have played a factor in the overheating in Canada, as Paddy Lowe explains the cause:
“A late puncture forced a second stop. It looks like he also collected some debris in one of his radiators, as he had overheating throughout the race. While this may not necessarily have affected his performance, it would have been quite a big distraction to manage. A podium was a possibility for him today – but unfortunately it didn’t work out.”
The issue doesn’t appear to have impacted the car’s performance, as he was able to challenge for P4, despite falling back to P9 at the start and taking an extra pit stop. He brought the car home in a respectable fifth position, after spinning on the second to last lap while trying to overtake a Red Bull in the final corner.
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