{"id":5286,"date":"2010-05-12T06:41:46","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T10:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=5286"},"modified":"2010-05-12T06:41:46","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T10:41:46","slug":"whitmarsh-confirms-wheel-failure-for-hamilton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/whitmarsh-confirms-wheel-failure-for-hamilton\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitmarsh confirms wheel failure for Hamilton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Martin Whitmarsh has confirmed that a failed wheel rim caused Lewis Hamilton to crash on the penultimate lap of last weekend&#8217;s Spanish grand prix.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Shortly after the Briton&#8217;s sudden tyre deflation, the McLaren team boss speculated that &#8220;debris&#8221; rather than an actual tyre problem probably caused the accident.<\/p>\n<p>Bridgestone&#8217;s initial analysis was similar, but it did not stop some pundits from hinting that Hamilton&#8217;s aggressive driving style might have been a contributing factor.<\/p>\n<p>But the damaged parts were returned to Woking for analysis on Monday, and Whitmarsh confirmed on Tuesday that a wheel rim failure looks the likely cause.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The rim failure is being investigated,&#8221; he told reporters during a teleconference.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It could be debris related, it could be an issue of deflection, or it could be a lack of tightness in the wheel nut, which allowed some flexing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What we know is the rim failed, probably human error somewhere in the process caused it, and that led to a deflation and the accident,&#8221; Whitmarsh added.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a9 RIF|GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Martin Whitmarsh has confirmed that a failed wheel rim caused Lewis Hamilton to crash on the penultimate lap of last weekend&#8217;s Spanish grand prix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,154,491,5284,1385],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5287,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5286\/revisions\/5287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}