That's nothing but Wolff being an ass. Yes, F1 drivers are precise, but they never hit the exact same stopping spot except by accident, maybe within couple cm's but that's about it. And none of the other wheelguns had any issues.
That isn't about stopping or not stopping on the "exact same stopping point". This is about whether or not the car stopped outside of the correct range for the impact wrench. In other words, there's a certain distance you can go with the wrench due to the length of the air hose (I'm assuming it's a compressed air wrench as we usually see in motorsports) before you have to angle the wrench to attempt to remove the wingnut.
In this case, he stopped just shy of the maximum operating range for the wrench. It's a mistake by both the driver for stopping too soon, and perhaps the pit crew who maybe should have pushed the car forwards a few inches when the pit crew member noticed that he had to angle the wrench to get at the wingnut.
However, pit crews are trained to immediately start work on their particular section of the car (jack, tires, fuel, etc.) so if the crew was doing what it's supposed to do, the car was already in a position where it couldn't be moved by the time the crew member was yelling out that he would have to angle the wrench.
Just to be sure, I double check to see if they do use compressed air driven impact wrenches...
Ferrari F1 Pit Stop Perfection - YouTube
Yup. And you'll notice that the hoses at the bottom of the screen have far more limited range than the ones at the top of the screen. If the car is outside of the operating range of the impact wrench (which is NOT "an exact stopping spot"), then the only option available is to angle the wrench and hope that it works.
If we had a video recording of Bottas' pit stop we should be able to easily see this. If the car was in the correct range then yeah, Wollf was talking out of his arse.
Regards,
SB
