Williams Martini Racing will look into the reasons why the seatbelts on Valtteri Bottas’ car came undone during the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday, but they admitted it was a worry that it happened at all.
Bottas was forced to pit around half distance at the Marina Bay Street Circuit to get his belts tightened up, which ultimately caused his retirement as the length of time he sat in the pits put too much torque on his gearbox, in particular first gear and had it failed could have done more damage to the whole gearbox.
“His seatbelt came undone,” said Rob Smedley, Williams’ Head of Performance Engineering on motorsport.com. “He told us on whatever lap it was, so we pitted immediately and did them up again in the pits.
“We need to understand why they have come undone, because it is really quite a worry in itself that seatbelts come undone while they are driving at these sort of speeds.
“As usual we just have to go away and do the correct analysis and due diligence. But the main thing is that we fix it for Malaysia and see what it was.
“We have done all the season without the seatbelts coming undone in the practice or race or anything like that, so it is a bit of a worry that it suddenly just happened.”
