Reliability issue costs Red Bull victory
Red Bull racing were on course of victory with Sebastian Vettel until a reliability problem meant that Sebastian had to stop along the track. Mark Webber meanwhile was the happier man today as he climbed up from 19th to 4th during the 57 laps in the European GP.
Mark Webber, 4th:
“I’m very happy with that, obviously it’s been a tough weekend up until today, but you never know what’s going to happen. In the middle of the race I wasn’t too happy and I didn’t really know what was going on. Then there was a bit of attrition at the front and the strategy worked out. We got it all working well today and we got some good points. It was a crazy day today – but I got points, so I’m happy with that.”
Sebastian Vettel, DNF:
“At the moment it’s not entirely clear what the problem was. I lost acceleration, the engine stalled and I couldn’t do anything; that was it. You can’t change it now. Up until that point it was clear we were strong, I was very happy in the car and had the pace. We were very quick today and it felt good. The initial re-start after the safety car was fine, but we’re not sure of the exact problem, we’ll need to look into it.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal:
“It was a bitterly disappointing race for Sebastian who had done everything right. He looked to be in comfortable control of the race until unfortunately during the safety car period we had a suspected issue with the alternator, which caused him to retire. We need to get the car back to fully understand the failure which we will work through with Renault, as it looked similar to the one that Grosjean had today. Mark drove a tremendous race and the strategy worked well. He started on the hard tyres then went onto the softer tyres, picking off cars getting into tyre trouble at the end, so it was a great recovery from Mark who drove well. Others had their bad luck today too. In addition to Mark’s drive, another positive is that we leave Valencia knowing we have a fast car. We’ve extended our lead in the Constructors’ and Mark’s recovery was very strong.”
Cyril Dumont, Renault:
“Today was a real disappointment as Sebastian was well ahead and seemed to have the race in his pocket. Then the alternator overheated, stopped supplying electrical power and the engine shut down. We’re not sure exactly why – it could be a number of things – but it’s definitely something we’ll look at when we get back to Viry. Congratulations to Mark though, from almost the back to fourth is a fantastic result.”
