Sebastian Vettel revealed the issue that saw him fail to start the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday was just as much a shock to him as it was his Scuderia Ferrari team.
The German pulled over on the straight heading towards the final two turns with smoke pouring from the back of his SF16-H, resulting in the first ‘did not start’ of his Formula 1 career.
Vettel bemoaned the lost points due to the issue having looked the most likely to take the fight to Mercedes this weekend, but insists the season still has a long way to go, with another nineteen races to follow this weekend in Bahrain.
“It was a very short race today, I didn’t even break a drop of sweat… We had a failure, I saw a lot of smoke from behind and I lost power so we decided to stop the car,” said Vettel.
“For sure it is frustrating, because in the end I am here to race. The problem came as a surprise, both for me and the whole team, as I was approaching Turn Eleven. Now we need to understand exactly the problem and learn from it.
“It is not ideal and we can’t be proud of it. But we had a good preparation over the winter, we are pushing very hard and we know that we can still improve.
“We still have a lot of races ahead of us, this is going to be a long year so even if today it was not good because I couldn’t score any point, we’ll make sure that the next race goes a lot better…”