Stefano Domenicali has admitted the Italian team must push to improve it’s reliability after Fernando Alonso suffered a gearbox issue throughout the race in Malaysia, before his engine finally gave way just three laps from the end.
“We are competitive, we are strong and we need to make sure that we are on top of the problems,” he told Autosport. “Unfortunately this weekend was the worst weekend in terms of a global result – mainly for two main factors.
“Reliability, which was unfortunately not good enough. But we cannot forget also that the bad result of this weekend was related to qualifying.”
Reliability has also struck their customer team, Sauber. Both C29’s failed to make the end of the race after engine issues, Pedro de la Rosa didn’t even manage to make the start after suffering problems driving to the grid.
Domenicali though, confirmed the problems Alonso encountered weren’t connected to those of Sauber.
“When we have a problem with reliability it is a worry and we have to make sure we can solve it as soon as possible. We don’t know what is exactly the nature of Fernando’s engine problem at the moment, and we don’t know what is the situation on the Sauber’s engines. But what I can say now, as far as the information I have, is that these problems are different.
“This is in a way something that will add another reason to make sure we are on top of the reliability problems on the engine side.”
