Scuderia Ferrari German driver Sebastian Vettel insists that the Maranello team has its reliability issues under control despite the problems faced by both himself and teammate Kimi Raikkonen during the 2017 Malaysia Grand Prix last weekend. Saturday saw Sebastian Vettel fail to set a time in qualifying as he reported a lack of power at the start of the session, with the issue appearing following a power unit change after an electrical problem in FP3. Kimi Raikkonen then managed to qualify in second position but was unable to start the race as he too suffered power unit trouble on the way to the grid.
Asked if Scuderia Ferrari could have an ongoing problem after two technical issues in two days, the four-time Formula One world champions explained: “Well I hope not. I think we have it under control. Obviously last weekend we did not. It is a shame that both of us compromised our weekend. I don’t know if it was the same issue, we need to have look. But for sure it’s not ideal if you retire one car [on Saturday] and one [before the race], so it’s something we need to obviously understand. So far we had a pretty good record this year for reliability. For sure you’re always on the edge, but if you speak to other people it’s the same. So not too worried to be honest, but we need to get on top of the problems that we have.” – Sebastian Vettel said, as reported by the Italian media on Tuesday.
And Kimi Raikkonen added his confidence that the problem will not cause him to have to take penalties later in the season, believing there was no damage to the engine: “I had some issue, obviously, I don’t know what and I don’t think any of us knows exactly what it was right now. It’s a disappointing thing. Obviously it hurts a lot of us but there’s nothing we can do now. Of course it’s far from ideal, the issue came out of nowhere. I’m sure we could have had a very good race but where we would have finished, who knows? And it’s pointless to even think about that right now. It’s a shame, but it is what it is and now we go for the next weekend. We haven’t used our last engines and I don’t think the engine had any issue – it was the end result of whatever the issue was. I think it’s all fine, I don’t see that we have an issue.” – the Finnish driver concluded.
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