Red Bull boss Christian Horner was quick to express his frustration after Sebastian Vettel retired from the Italian GP with an alternator failure – a part that is supplied by Renault.
Vettel lost victory in the European GP after a failure, and had another problem in FP3 at Monza. Jerome D’Ambrosio also experienced an issue in Italy, which led to a precautionary change.
Asked to compare the Monza race problem with the one that stopped Vettel in Valencia, Horner said: “I haven’t seen the component itself, but the similarity is it’s caused another DNF. Two race stopping failures – one that cost us a certain victory, and today a sensible amount of points – is extremely costly, and something that needs to be rectified for the remaining races.
“It looks like there was a similar issue on another car with the same component during the weekend. Very disappointing, but we need to work with Renault to try and understand, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“We need to find rectifications for the DNFs that have occurred. DNFs are extremely expensive, and it’s our first non points scoring race since Korea 2010, which also happened to be an engine failure that cost us on that day as well. We can’t afford to not be finishing races.
“It makes the mountain higher, but both the drivers are still in the championship race, we’re still leading the constructors’ by 19 points, and with seven races to go we’ve got to make sure we throw everything at it.”
Horner said that Vettel was doing a good job in the race, despite a lack of straightline performance.
“Sebastian was really hanging on, and he was doing a really strong job. He managed to hold onto Jenson early on in the race, but then the Ferraris were just too quick for us on the straights. We were powerless to defend. But Sebastian did nothing wrong, he drove as hard as he could, and this circuit unfortunately just exposes our weaknesses.
“We were on target, we felt we could one stop. We knew it was marginal, but we really felt we could do it. Certainly in Sebastian’s case his tyres were in pretty good condition right up until the terminal failure with six laps to go.”
He declined to say much about Vettel’s drive through penalty for forcing Fernando Alonso off the road: “It’s irrelevant effectively after the DNF. Judge it for yourself – it seemed a bit harsh. It didn’t seem to warrant a penalty, but that’s my opinion.”
Adam Cooper F1 
VET penalty is obviously yet another case of the Ferrari International Assistance in action, mean it’s Monza – Alonsó himself felt it in 2006. 2011 and 2012 between ALO and VET look identical to me. Double D(iarrhoea)R(acing)S(tewards) standards.
Christian Horner? Buddhist Horner, now that’s what I’m talking about! Pretty weird thing with alternators, RBR are doing smth. dodgy for this to happen.
And finally, KERS must be chopped. My man JDA had it, lost it on lap 4 or whatever. It cost him a points finish, for sure, you know. If all teams race with KERS there’s no advantage from it whatsoever, apart from monstrous costs involved.
Finally finally, Mayrooshas seem to be closer to Catercheesers this time without da CURSE, I’ve been exclusively predicting it for quite some time now but Mayroosha will eat Tommi Hernandez and Kovaleninen alive in 2013. They say Pete Roff’s gonna lose his Seat Leon with Catercheesers next year, so I’m guessing GP2 veteran of many years Guide’O Ivan Drr Garden’s gonna step in and blow us away, obviously he also will be finishing behind Mayrooshas next year.
Yes, red-faced bull is not pretty to see, dear droogies. I’m off for now.