Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Sebastian Vettel car failure unclear – Formula 1
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has said that the team is unclear over Sebastian Vettel’s car failure during the recently concluded European Grand Prix.
Vettel started the race from pole and took the lead from the very start of the race. He was so strong that he had piled up a lead of 20 seconds from the second placed Romain Grosjean.
During the race there was a collision between Heikki Kovalainen of Caterham and Jean-Eric Vergne of Toro Rosso. This incident brought the safety car in play and Vettel’s lead was nullified.
Even after safety car period was over Vettel managed to stay ahead but the German found out that the car had halted because of a mechanical failure.
It ended an opportunity for Vettel to make a hat-trick of wins at the venue as he won the last two races in Valencia. He also lost an opportunity to move up the Drivers’ standings to take the lead from Lewis Hamilton.
Red Bull has speculated that the issue could be with the alternator of the car. Romain Grosjean driving the Lotus with the Renault engines same as Red Bull had a similar issue with the car and failed to complete the race.
“It's just another demonstration that sometimes motor racing can be cruel,” Horner told Sky Sports. “Sebastian had done everything right, he was a pit stop ahead, he'd driven immaculately, had great pace, the race was his really. Cruel, cruel luck, but we
must take heart that we had a very fast car here ... bitterly disappointing for Seb but he'll be back.”
Vettel explained his surprise at the failure and said that he happy that the car was going so fast until that point.
He added, “On the straight down to turn 17 I had to give way to the other people, the engine stalled and switched off and there was nothing we could have done,” he said. “At the moment it's not clear exactly what the problem was, maybe a bit similar to the
problem Mark had on Friday.”
It will be interesting to see what the fault comes out to be and how Red Bull manages it in the future Grands Prix.
Tags: