Red Bull has demanded change from Renault after yet another race in which Sebastian Vettel has failed to finish due to an issue with the power unit.
The German lost power on lap five and his race looked to be over however he managed to get going again, but was already a lap down and the team chose to retire him in order to save his engine.
Sister team Toro Rosso saw both its drivers retire as well with power unit problems, leading to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner hitting out at engine supplier Renault.
“It’s frustrating that we’re in the situation that we are,” he said after the race. “We’ve obviously had a lot of success with Renault. We’ve won all the races and all the championships that we’ve achieved with Renault power, but the situation just isn’t improving at the moment.
“The reliability is unacceptable, the performance is unacceptable and there needs to be change at Renault. It can’t continue like this. It’s not good for Renault and it’s not good for Red Bull. We need to work together as partners and there will not be another engine in the back of the car next year, but we want to be competitive and we want to run at the front, so these kinds of issues cannot and should not happen.
“Something needs to happen because whatever’s being done there isn’t working at the moment. It’s not our business, it’s not our responsibility. We’re the end user and it’s just frustrating that the product is not where it needs to be at the moment.”
Renault responded to the comments and claimed that whilst it was aware they would struggle at the Red Bull Ring, they didn’t expect the reliability issues they encountered.
“Safe to say it’s been a very tough weekend for us,” said Remi Taffin. “We came here believing the circuit would not suit the characteristics of the Renault Energy F1 Power. The Power Unit is not strong on the straights but there are many other good qualities to it, which we have not been able to show today.
“Unfortunately we also experienced some issues, which have put us in a negative light. With Sebastian’s car the team experienced an issue linked to switching maps at the start. We will look at why this happened as it cost the team a lot of valuable points today. It could be an issue with our software but it could also be linked to common software – in either case it clearly needs a lot of investigation.
“We’ll go through everything from Red Bull and the other teams with a fine tooth comb and come back stronger in Silverstone.”
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