12/04/2019
NEWS STORY
In the final stages of the Bahrain Grand Prix, both Renaults pulled off-track within moments of one another, necessitating the deployment of the safety car.
It was subsequently discovered that both retirements were related to the MGU-K, and followed a similar issue that caused Carlos Sainz to retire in Melbourne, the Spaniard becoming the first retirement of the season.
As a result, Renault has introduced a new-spec MGU-K, which was actually available in time for Bahrain, but the team opted not to use it.
"The retirements were completely related to the MGU-K problem," admits team boss Cyril Abiteboul, according to Motorsport.com. "It was extremely clear for Daniel, but it was also related to that for Nico, except that for Nico we also had to change the power unit out of precaution.
"It was a little bit the same thing as for Carlos in Australia," he revealed, "the failure of the MGU-K triggered some damage to the rest of the engine.
"The update was triggered by what happened to Carlos in Melbourne," he added. "We only had two parts available for Bahrain, one to go with Carlos to replace the one that had the failure in Melbourne, and one that was available as a spare for the two teams. But it was decided not to replace any of them out of precaution. Obviously this weekend we are able to change for all cars."
Asked how it was that both cars retired virtually simultaneously, the Frenchman said: "It was a sign of God! It was a pure coincidence, but clearly an indication that we needed to get it sorted. So the MGU-K is sorted for this weekend.
"Having said that we have had a number of issues unrelated to the MGU-K since the season started," he admitted, "the qualifying in Melbourne we had a problem, the qualifying in Bahrain we had a problem, and it's important that we now put that behind us and get things in order."
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