On the final lap of the 2016 Austrian Grand Prix the two Mercedes drivers had a collision while battling for the race win. Immediately following the race it was revealed that Rosberg’s Mercedes W07 had suffered from a Brake By Wire (BBW) failure shortly before the collision.
The system which is said to have failed is something that the mainstream media and race commentators have struggled to explain all that well, but it is called brake by wire or BBW for short and every 2016 F1 car has to use it. It is all to do with the hybrid technology used on the cars.

When the driver hits the brake it is not just the carbon brake discs and pads that slows the car down on a 2016 car, the energy recovery system also does a significant amount too (via the MGU-K), rather like engine braking but a much stronger effect. This means that the drivers left pedal (F1 cars have no clutch pedal) is no longer linked directly to the rear brakes instead it is linked to a computer which then controls the rear brakes. The front brakes continue to operate in the same way as they always have done. The main reason for this is that rules say that the car is only allowed to recover a certain amount of energy per lap from the rear brakes (it does not recover from the fronts), and there is only a finite amount of energy that can be stored in the battery. When either of these limits is reached the ERS stops recovering energy and the braking effect is lost and the traditional brakes take over.
For th...