Red Bull suffered their worst result in 36 races after both cars failed to score points at the Italian Grand Prix – the last time that happened was at the 2010 Korean GP.
Whilst Mark Webber made a driver error, spinning at the exit of Ascari to flat-spot his tyres which then resulted in him retiring, Sebastian Vettel endured yet another reliability issue.
The German was running fifth behind Fernando Alonso but was told by his team to immediately stop and turn his engine off as his alternator had overheated and cut power to the car – a fate he suffered at the European GP.
Team principal Christian Horner says the team must work flat-out with Renault to ensure there is no repeat of the incident this season.
“A hugely disappointing race – our first non-points scoring race since Korea 2010,” he said after the race. “It was a repeat failure on Sebastian’s car with the alternator and we need to look into it and work with Renault to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“It’s already cost us a victory in Valencia and now a points-finish again here in Monza. It’s important we address it for the remaining seven races.
“For Mark, it was a tough race. Unfortunately he just ran out of tyres near the end of the race and the resulting flat spots that came from the high-speed spin put an awful lot of vibration in the car. Rather than risk a failure, we chose to retire the car.”
Renault’s Cyril Dumont explained the issue in more detail and apologised to the team for their failure.
“We changed the alternator on Sebastian’s car yesterday, but unfortunately we had the same failure in today’s race.
“We are still looking into why this happened, but we do know that even though the alternator was being operated entirely within the prescribed range, the part itself overheated and shut off the power supply.
“We have to apologise to Red Bull Racing as clearly this has hurt us in the Championship. We have no option, but to sort it out and it will still be a priority before Singapore.”
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