Red Bull has slammed its engine partner Renault, after a difficult start to the 2015 world championship campaign in Australia.
Star driver Daniel Ricciardo could not run at all in Friday’s second practice session due to an engine problem, and in the morning had been just tenth fastest. It emerges that the team will be able to repair the ‘power unit’, but Red Bull official Dr Helmut Marko indicated that the relationship with Renault remains fragile. “The engine is broken after 50 kilometres,” he bluntly told the Austrian broadcaster ORF. “We have a meeting on Wednesday in England. Those in charge of Renault are not yet here, they’re coming tonight,” Marko said in Melbourne, “but it cannot be like this.”
He continued: “We are promised again and again ‘Next time it will be better, the test results are encouraging’. “But if you have an engine failure after 50 kilometres, that is incomprehensible,” Marko insisted. “With all the engines, driveability is significantly worse than in testing. We wanted an improvement and we have taken a step back,” he said. “The gap to the top now is frightening,” added Marko.
Also openly angry after Friday practice in Melbourne was Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. “The actual power is the same as we had in Abu Dhabi last year,” he is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport.
