Renault boss, Cyril Abiteboul has had to come up with answers about not providing Ricciardo and Red Bull with all 6 power unit elements for the German GP, when Ricciardo had already taken a 20 place grid penalty that had forced him to the back of the grid.
The other three power unit parts wouldn’t have resulted in a further penalty and Ricciardo could have found himself in a wonderful position for the Hungarian GP.
However, Ricciardo now finds himself in a cloud of doubt, as his car came to halt midway through the German GP, because of an engine issue.
Christian Horner wasn’t quite happy with what had transpired and in an interview with Motorsport.com, confirmed that they it was a ‘Renault’ call.
“That’s a question for Renault. The normal strategy is to change everything you can.” Horner said.
The controversy has that ugly ‘sour grape’ smell, as Red Bull won’t be continuing with Renault next year, having made the switch to a Honda powered engine for 2019 and 2020.
Abiteboul that it was absolutely necessary to come up with a statement, so as to avoid getting a bad reputation amongst other stakeholders.
“First we need to understand what happened,” Abiteboul said as quoted by Motorsport.com
“There was no reason to change the ICE, at the time. It’s always the same thing, in hindsight after the race, you can always reinvent the world and re-do scenarios, but it’s like strategy, wet and dry, it’s like lots of things.
“But at the time, when we had to make a decision, with the information we had at the time, there was absolutely no reason. Engine failure can happen at any time, even with a new engine, unfortunately, it can happen, as happened in the past.
“There was no more certainty with a new engine than an old engine, so I think we need to first find out what happened before drawing any conclusions.” he added.
The Renault boss also confirmed that availability was not really an issue and that it was conscious decision.
“There is no situation with availability. First we are really focussed on Spec C, and we are in between two specs and it’s better to try and wait for Spec C availability.
“And secondly there was enough mileage available on that engine and another previous engine in order to make it to the Spec C. There was enough mileage from the engines already in the pool to cover the rest of the season with those plus a Spec C.
“Obviously this answer seems completely inappropriate after the information that we have today, but with a crystal ball you can re-invent the world, and do lots of things very differently.” Abiteboul said.
