Juncadella: “Technical knockout due to contact between Max and Engel? No, it just happens”

The Spaniard doesn’t believe in a cause-effect relationship. “We were doing everything perfectly, but the Green Hell had other plans.” Jules Gounon did not hide his disappointment at the technical knockout of the #3 Mercedes while firmly leading the race with Dani Juncadella at the wheel. Max Verstappen was phenomenal in his stints driving in a 24 hour race at the Nurburgring with over 350 thousand spectators also coming to admire the exploits of the four-time F1 champion. The Dutch driver was a tightrope walker in the first stint and fought with Maro Engel at night, there was even contact between the two. According to Dani Juncadella, there is no connection between that episode and the broken transmission shaft: “No, I don’t think so, it was something that happened many hours before – said the Spaniard – it’s simply motorsport, these things happen. Unfortunately today it was our turn, but I don’t think there’s anyone to blame. I came out of the pits, everything seemed fine, but after about half or a third of the lap I saw a fault message appear intermittently. I reset the message and everything seemed fine, but then I realized that the ABS wasn’t working, so I was driving without ABS; it wasn’t actually that bad, I was able to get by somehow: I adjusted the brake distribution slightly to try to avoid locking the front wheels, and it was drivable. I had the impression that they wanted me to come into the pits to find the problem, but I thought it was better to continue and maybe figure out what we could do. Then I started hearing noises and, of course, the car became undrivable. I had a feeling that at some point something was going to break. So I slowly went back to the pits and we found a problem with the driveshaft which then caused some collateral damage in the rest of the car. That’s probably what created the problem with the electronics getting confused and deactivating the ABS.” Click here to add Formula Passion as your favorite source on Google Discover: you will find our content more easily!

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-05-18 18:30:00