German driver Sebastian Vettel (right), of Infiniti Red Bull Racing team, and mechanics push his car after a breakdown during a four-day pre-season testing at Bahrain’s Sakhir Circuit.
MANAMA: Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel admitted Red Bull were facing serious problems after he failed to complete a lap in testing yesterday, just two weeks out from the start of the new season.
Vettel’s car suffered electrical issues which meant he stopped on the installation lap at Sakhir and then spent the rest of the day frustratingly kicking his heels in the garage.
The setback came just a day after teammate Daniel Ricciardo had completed 66 laps in the second Red Bull for the Australian’s most convincing outing this winter.
“At the moment we obviously have lots of different problems we are curing,” said Vettel, who will have his final test run of the close-season today before the season gets under way in Melbourne on March 16.
“It’s not the best situation to be in but we can’t change it. Obviously reliability is still a big question mark. It’s difficult to say how long it will take to remedy. I think some things will just come down to the fact that in two weeks’ time we’ll have lots of new parts on the car.
“We’ve had some damage because of the problems we’ve had here and the parts aren’t available overnight, so from that side I think things will get better over the next couple of weeks.”
Williams driver Felipe Massa topped the time charts with a time of 1min 33.258sec off 99 laps with Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg in second spot just ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.
“We had a very good day today doing almost 100 laps. We did a lot more performance work in the car which is something that we haven’t done so much of so far,” said Massa.
“I’m really happy with the car and feel we found a good balance. We did so much work on the set-up but it is very important that we go to Australia prepared.”
Meanwhile, Red Bull dismissed reports that Vettel had “thrown a hissy fit” about the situation.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner told Sky Sports News that speculation Vettel had thrown a tantrum when he first tested the car back in January was “complete and utter rubbish”.
“I don’t know where that came from about Sebastian,” he added.
“He is fine, he understands that there are issues and he is trying to help the team where he can.
“There has not been one raised voice, one bit of discontent. He has just got his head down and he has a huge amount of trust in the team.” The Red Bull website also carried a highly sarcastic report from their “F1 Spy” about the rumour mill. AGENCIES
