Red Bull: Vettel worried about his power unit quota

The 2014 season for Sebastian Vettel seems to be an ordeal for the four-time reigning world champion. The German is facing reliability issues that had scarcely affected him since the beginning of his rise to the top of the discipline.

While his young teammate Daniel Ricciardo has multiplied top 4 finishes (4th in the Bahrain and China Grand Prix, 3rd in the Spanish and Monaco Grand Prix), Vettel had to settle for a single best result of third place after a hard-fought battle in Malaysia behind the two untouchable Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. A series of mechanical misadventures, the latest happening on the streets of Monaco, leaves him in a distant sixth place in the World Drivers’ Championship standings, nine points behind his Australian teammate.

In addition, the German champion, usually optimistic, does not hide a certain concern about the use of his Renault engines. The question of hybrid block reliability is central this season – the first of a new technological era – and with the quota of five engines per team allocated this year by the new regulations, the future of Renault-powered teams, which experienced many reliability issues during the pre-season and has launched a race against time to improve the turbo engines and their usage, could potentially darken.

At the forefront of these, the Red Bull team, through its four-time world champion, has expressed its pessimism in this area: « It is quite easy to calculate and realize that we will not have enough » said Vettel in the columns of Auto Motor Und Sport. The German thus expects to be penalized during the season for using more power units than planned.

For reference, we are redirecting you to our article which lists all possible penalties regarding the change, outside the quota, of the components of the power unit and the power unit in its entirety.