Sunday 12 April 2015

Red Bull and Renault left with plenty of work to after nightmare Chinese Grand Prix

(Alexandre Guillaumot DPPI for Renault Sport F1)

Infiniti Red Bull Racing had a very disappointing Chinese Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday as they experienced a DNF with Daniil Kvyat suffering an engine failure. The RB11 looked like it was going to be competitive this weekend however both Daniil Kvyat and Daniel Ricciardo struggled.

Speaking following the race, Daniil Kvyat sated:

This weekend has been a bit tricky, and not the happy ending we would have liked. I saw a lot of smoke coming from the rear of my car, I am not sure what happened but the team are investigating. It’s not an easy situation, but we have to stay strong, I am with the team and we will all work on it together, and we’ll keep our heads high heading into Bahrain.

Ricciardo seemed to struggle with the handling and brake balance of the RB11 as the Australian made a number of uncharacteristic errors. He started the race from 11th place but got bogged down at the start as the car went into anti stall which meant that he was forced into repeating the start procedure for a second time.

He went on to recover slightly and finished the race in ninth place salvaging two points for the Infiniti Red Bull Racing Team.

The two points scored by Ricciardo means that the Milton Keynes based outfit move back ahead of their sister team Scuderia Toro Rosso in the Constructors championship. Speaking after the race, Infiniti Red Bull Racing Team Principal Christian Horner commented by saying:

It was a frustrating afternoon for us. Daniel had a poor start which put him in the back of the field. Daniil had a reasonable start; we took the different strategic option to start on the hard tyre which struggled to warm up in the early laps, and then his race was unfortunately cut prematurely short with an engine failure. Daniel recovered reasonably well to finish ninth after making some decent overtaking moves, but today’s results were not what we were looking for.”

Renault Sport F1 endured a nightmare race as their suffered two engine failures, one for each of their team’s with Kvyat at Infiniti Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen at Scuderia Toro Rosso. Speaking following the race, Renault’s Thierry Salvi said:

Obviously a difficult weekend reliability-wise. Daniil had an ICE problem that is under investigation as we need to fully understand the issue before the next race. Daniel worked hard to recover from a very bad start. We have to stay focused on the reliability first to fix our issues as quickly as possible.

© Ben Johnston 2015

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