The Haas F1 Team suffered a total power failure for 10 laps during the British Grand Prix last weekend, according to team principal Guenther Steiner.
The total power failure caused panic among the engineers, which also meant they could not speak to their drivers as they looked to solve the issue, which meant Esteban Gutierrez pitted a lap later than he should have.
“We had a problem with our electricity – everything went down, we had no data, nothing available to the engineers because everything went down,” said Steiner after the race.
“You cannot concentrate on the car anymore but you try to fix to get your telemetry back. We lost a bit of time there because Esteban then came in a lap late for going to dry [tyres], because it was [during] that period.”
There was a panic among the engineers but Steiner reassured that the electricians fixed the issues quickly.
“It was loss of power with the system, it just went down, we found out what exactly happened and then we were switched on again,” the Austrian continued.
“I think we were about 6-10 laps without electricity, engineers start to panic when they have no telemetry.
“When it’s like [the situation in the middle of the race], we still need to go racing, we cannot stop the car [at that moment] until we get telemetry!”
The issue also occurred at the time Romain Grosjean retired, with neither the engineers nor Grosjean knowing that there was a problem until it was too late.
