Sebastian Vettel Receives New Engine for Chinese Grand Prix

Four-time Formula One World Champion Sebastian Vettel, found himself out of the second round of competition in Bahrain before the race even started. Vettel experienced a catastrophic engine failure during the Sakhir formation lap that resulted in an early retirement and plenty of concerns about Ferrari’s engine reliability in 2016. This is the second engine failure for Scuderia Ferrari in as little as two weeks with Kimi Raikkonen receiving zero points in Australia due to a failure with the turbo charger. Early season engine woes during both weeks of competition are raising concerns that Ferrari’s dreams of ending Mercedes dominance may be over before the season truly get under way.

4/4/16

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“We need to understand exactly the problem and learn from it,” Vettel said. “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.” Vettel went on to say, “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.”

Technicians back in Maranello have determined that a software issue led to an injector failure resulting in the engine letting go before the start of the race. This has left Ferrari with no choice but to move Vettel onto the second of five engines allowed for the entire season. Starting the second engine for the third round of competition is far from ideal but does not spell doom for Ferrari just yet. The race engineers at Scuderia are confident that the problems have been detected and corrected for both Vettel and Raikkonen who received a podium finish in Bahrain. There is plenty of racing left in the 2016 Formula One season, we will just have to wait and see.

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