Renault F1 Managing Director Cyril Abiteboul and Advisor Alain Prost have both apologised to Max Verstappen and Red Bull for what has now revealed to be an engine shut down that caused him to retire from the Belgian Grand Prix.
In front of an estimated 80,000 Dutch fans at Spa-Francorchamps, the 19-year-old suffered his sixth retirement of the 2017 season and third due to an engine problem causing team boss Christian Horner to consider whether the teams get value for money from their supplier among other criticisms.
To make matters even worse, such has been the number of problems this year, Verstappen is now expected to start at the back of the grid at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix due to penalties for taking more than his allocation of four of each engine component.
“I personally apologise to Red Bull Racing, and more specifically to Max and his many fans who are as disappointed as we are,” Abiteboul said.
“We will work closely with RBR to define a course of action and a roadmap to eradicate issues such as this one which meant they couldn’t harness their package’s potential.”
As mentioned it has since been revealed that an electrical problem caused the engine to shut down rather than fail, as it entered a safety mode that has been programmed to try and prevent significant damage.
“When the car came back, they removed the plug, put it back again and the engine worked,” Verstappen said.
“They want to play safe and not to blow the engine, but I prefer that [blowing the engine] than its shuts down the engine and it runs again at the next restart,” he added.
The constant issues have led to speculation over the future of the youngest F1 winner in history who has admitted frustration is wearing thin with Red Bull and questioned their future competitiveness with Renault.
Asked about the level of faith his son has in the team, former F1 driver and father Jos Verstappen told Dutch TV: “You do start to question everything, I notice about Max that he’s very disappointed.
“It’s tough to keep yourself motivated the whole time when things are going like this. I mean, he’s doing very well in qualifying, he’s half a second quicker than his team mate and he’s just behind the Ferraris and then, after seven or eight laps, he’s standing at the side of the track again. This should not be able to happen, certainly not at a top team.”
Verstappen Jr. added: “I’ve spoken with (Red Bull advisor) Helmut [Marko] again and told him that I’m not happy. The fun fades away. You go on holiday, charge yourself after a kind of terrible [first part of the] season and then you arrive at Spa and it goes wrong.”
