Lewis Hamilton could lose his “key strength” to fight for the 2022 F1 title after Mercedes suffered brake issues on Friday in Bahrain. It comes after Hamilton radioed he had a “problem” with his right front brakes during the second practice session.
When asked how this issue could affect Hamilton, Chandhok replied “badly”.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, he added: “One of the problems or causes could be a difference of temperature. So normally, if you have one brake substantially cooler than the other you get this imbalance across the front.
“On top of that, we are seeing this bouncing… and that will again create an issue with front locking because the front wheels aren’t consistently making contact with the road.”
He added: “The frequency of the bumps carries on with this Mercedes, it never quite settles. Combine that with an offset of temperature and when Lewis hits the brake pedal the car moves around.
READ MORE: Lewis Hamilton facing setback with Mercedes ‘suffering like no other’
McLaren said they had brought an “interim solution” to Bahrain meaning they have not got on top of the issues.
Team principal Andreas Seidl said: “Obviously brake ducts are quite complex parts if you look at the entire Formula 1 car,” so it was a race against time in order to bring an interim solution to here. It’s definitely not the final, ideal solution. But we did what we could, the factory was flat-out in the last seven, eight days in order to provide us with the solutions we have on the cars now, which we have to evaluate now in free practice one and two.
“Hopefully, it allows us then to get back to normal running, to get back into our rhythm as well, which we lost a bit during the last test and then we take it from there.”
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