Renault Sport F1 points to the FIA in Vettel’s breakdown

Thierry Salvi, track support manager at Red Bull for Renault, explained in a podcast broadcast on the RSF1 Facebook page that the problem encountered by Sebastian Vettel in the early laps of the Austrian Grand Prix was related to the mapping: The issue arose when changing the mapping at the start of an overtaking maneuver, which provided a setting to help him overtake, and he suddenly lost power. The problem disappeared when pressing the button again. This statement is in line with comments made by Rémi Taffin a few hours after the race.

« There is a button that will select different engine mappings. It turns out that when he [Vettel] pressed this button at the start of the race, there was an issue with the control unit, » explains Thierry Salvi, before continuing: « Upon investigating a little further, we believe there is a problem in the car’s software. Unfortunately, it is not the software managed by us, but the software managed by the FIA ». The control unit is an electronic box common to all teams and supplied by McLaren Electronics, a subsidiary of the McLaren Group.

The FIA was already aware, they had been informed about this software bug at the beginning of the year and a new version had been released, which was supposed to resolve the issue. Thierry Salvi remains confident even if he doesn’t forget to slightly criticize the Federation: « It’s a bug that will be resolved, I believe, for the next race. It’s a bug we knew about, which we informed the FIA about at the beginning of the year, and they had released a version that was supposed to resolve the issue. Apparently, it hasn’t been resolved… »

Before Salvi’s statements, Christian Horner had joked about the incident: « The big difference between Mercedes and Renault is that with Mercedes, if you press the button to overtake, you go faster; with Renault, if you press it, you stop! » he remarked on Servus TV, a channel owned by Red Bull.