Red Bull to change Vettel’s gearbox and incur penalty

2014 Spanish Grand Prix

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Sebastian Vettel is set to be moved back five places on the grid for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Red Bull confirmed the gearbox in his car will have to be changed after it failed during today’s qualifying session.

Drivers are required to use the same gearbox for six consecutive events. Therefore Vettel will automatically receive a five-place penalty which will move him back to 15th on the grid.

Vettel said he lost second gear immediately after leaving his garage but believed he could do a lap without it – only for the other gears to fail shortly afterwards.

“I left the garage for Q3 and lost drive in second gear,” he said. “I still had third gear and above so we thought we could do the lap with that, but by turn one I had lost all the other gears, so we couldn’t continue.”

It’s the second technical problem this weekend for Vettel, who missed almost all of yesterday’s running while a faulty wiring loom was replaced on his car.

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Image © Red Bull/Getty

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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41 comments on “Red Bull to change Vettel’s gearbox and incur penalty”

  1. Tough luck.

    1. Hahaha. Good one!

    2. Indeed, because we wouldn’t want our hated 4-time champion rival to actually compete in the race, right? It would be just unbearable.

  2. Seb has had terrible luck so far this season… But it’s how he bounces back from things like this that shows us just how good he is. He always bounced back from ‘tough luck’ in the past, so I’m sure he’ll do similar again.

    1. I remember in 2008 he was nowhere at the start of the season – his pace was hirrible and he was crashing quite a lot. But by mid season he recovered and then won at Monza. I hope he manages somthing similar this season.

      1. Wasn’t he only nowhere because the car was terrible? It was the previous year’s car until Monaco.

      2. none of the crashes he was involved in at the start of 2008 were his fault.

      3. His pace in early 2008 was actually very strong & he had some brilliant qualifying performances, Its a part of why people started to pay attention to what he was doing.
        His biggest problem in early 2008 in terms of race results was that he got caught up in some 1st lap accidents, None of which were his fault.

        1. Australia he qualified an awesome 10th, but his start was terrible and was the reason he got involved with Hondas, Force Indias, and Super Aguris.
          Malaysia he binned it forgetting to brake on one of the high-speed corners.
          Bahrain he barged into Coulthard (in the Red Bull I’ll add ;)).
          Spain wasn’t his fault at all though.

  3. definitely sabotage

    1. proof?

      1. sarcasm

  4. He did manage to recover from all the horrendous luck in 2010 (Retiring from the lead twice and losing another to mechanical issues) so hopefully he can do the same this season.

    1. I still remember what happened the year before that with Team brackley doing what they did back then, so…….

  5. Its starting to look like it wasnt just Webber that had bad luck… its simply RedBull not being able to put 2 decent cars together over a weekend.

    1. Webber had reliability problems throughout his F1 career regardless of what team he was driving for.

      It was the same with Rubens at Ferrari, People always used his poor reliability as proof he was the clear #2, Yet this ignores the fact that even at Jordan/Stewart before he went to Ferrari, Rubens had always had a lot of unreliability.

      1. I’m proposing a theory that it might have been Mark’s height. The car would have to be internally repackaged somewhat to accommodate the larger cabin required for his larger frame, which perhaps was a contributing factor with a lot of his KERS failures.

        Vettel did overall suffer from more race-ending failures during their partnership nonetheless.

  6. I guess he’ll be doing an alternate strategy tomorrow, should be interesting.

    1. As he made it to Q3 will he not be forced to start the race on his Q2 tyres?

      1. @jackysteeg
        Ah I forgot they changed that with all the wet quali we’ve had, yes I suppose so.

    2. Is that how it works? I wasn’t sure with it but it makes sense – the Q3 extra set have to be handed back.

      Shame.

  7. OK, so what are the odds of an Abu-Dhabi-MMXII-style SC deployment(s)?

  8. OK, so will the next “conspiracy theory” (minus the bad “stereotype” they sometimes get) involve how Denny Hulme could win the title driving for the team for which its owner also drives…….?

    1. What are you on about?

  9. petebaldwin (@)
    10th May 2014, 18:32

    Amazing what a difference a year makes! All the bad luck seems to have swapped sides of the garage…

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        11th May 2014, 1:04

        @keithcollantine – Over their time together – perhaps not but certainly last year. Webber regularly had issues with his starts and with KERS. Hearing Ted Kravitz say “Webber has an issue with his KERS” was only second in frequency to hearing Brundle say “Look at the lead Vettel has already” at the start of lap 2!

        1. Not that it’d make a difference since he wouldn’t have been challenging Vettel regardless… in this case however, both drivers have a realistic shot of beating the other.

  10. Looks like Helmut wants him to get out of the team. They have got their new GoldenBoy and Vettel is redundant now. It’s a cut-throat business so though luck for Seb.

    1. yeah, right
      One must admit that Ric is doing a great job and he was very much underrated.
      Still…
      Let’s just take ’07: a rookie outperformed his 2-time wc teammate. today, that 2-time champ is considered by some (dont know why) THE best in history…
      pr and marketing can sell anything

      1. I don’t think many people think of Alonso as the best ever.

        1. omarr-pepper
          10th May 2014, 20:53

          @matt90 many people say it everyday here. Checkit, especially when it’s time to underrrate Vettel

          1. I think you’re exaggerating. Yeah, there’re some guys saying that Alonso is the best…… but not the best ever, the best in the current grid !!!!!! I’m an Alonso fan too, but I cannot say he’s the best even in the current grid. He’s definately 1 of the top 3 of the current grid.

  11. A clear demonstration how complex are the 2014 F1 cars, Vettel faced problems during Friday practice sessions. I suspect that it has something to do with the old new chassis, maybe an assembly problem… and it was enough to trigger a chain reaction, i strongly doubt that he will have a trouble free race unless the team manage to fix the car under the parc fermé regime for safety reasons. Same thing happened with Kimi when he missed the first practice session in the Chinese GP which compromised the rest of his race weekend.

    1. I just hope he’s able to finish the race tomorrow, and get some solid points. So far I think he has had less than 15 laps of running the entire weekend…

      1. I mean 35laps..or about…

  12. Not that surprising he seems a bit down from time to time. Almost every weekend, something breaks on his car. It would piss me off too. Atleast he seems to put in the effort. He almost did the marshalls’ job himself.

  13. Hey where are all the screaming conspiracy theorists that claim Red bull only supports Vettel?

    1. Dion (@infinitygc)
      10th May 2014, 23:06

      I believe last year’s Boo-bus has hit a traffic jam, I’ve heard traffic can be terrible at Barcelona.

  14. It’s very hard.

  15. He did get webbers car

Comments are closed.