The United States Grand Prix poses a serious challenge for reliability at this stage of the season, according to Renault’s Remi Taffin.
The event is particularly straining on the power unit and its hybrid systems, and with just three races left and many drivers having used up all their allowed spares, penalties could begin to play a role in the race outcome.
“Now we enter the final three races, reliability starts to become an overriding concern so having such a challenging circuit at this point in the year makes everyone a little nervous,” said Taffin.
Sebastian Vettel is all but guaranteed to use a sixth Internal Combustion Engine for the race and will likely start toward the back of the grid as a result. Other drivers are in a similar position.
Taffin though is hopeful they can put checks in place to ensure they get the most from the remaining mileage on the units.
“Mileage on each part is high and putting each through its paces means we’ll have a very busy weekend to check everything over and safeguard against any issues.
“In most cases we have enough flexibility to play around, plus we also have the confidence of knowing our performance and how to fully exploit it.”
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