In the round-up: Alpine believe a similar problem with their Renault power units put both its drivers out if yesterday’s Singapore Grand Prix.
In brief
Power unit problem behind Alpine retirements
Fernando Alonso retired from sixth place on lap 21. Team mate Esteban Ocon dropped out of the race just six laps later.
Alpine team principal Szafnauer suspects the same problem took both drivers out. “Unfortunately we had a double retirement which is a pity as we’ve been very competitive all weekend,” he said.
“It looks like we suffered a similar power unit issue on both cars, which we will investigate in detail. It’s important that we identify the root cause of what happened and put preventative measures in place to avoid a repeat.”
Mercedes rue “race to forget” in Singapore
The Singapore Grand Prix went “from bad to worse” for Mercedes, says the team’s head of trackside operations Andrew Shovlin. While Lewis Hamilton started third but fell to ninth after crashing, George Russell was unable to fight his way into the points after starting from the pit lane.
Shovlin said Hamilton’s off-track moment on the first lap compromised his tyre performance. “Lewis dropped a bit of ground to Sainz on the start and then got pushed wide and he lost all tyre temp going through the water,” he explained. “That meant the opening laps were tricky.”
Hamilton had to pit with front wing damage after his crash. Shovlin said the timing of that pit stop “was unfortunate as we lost time with the change but then lost further positions as the Safety Car allowed others to pit without losing much time.”
The team believe Russell was on course to reach the top 10 until he tangled with Mick Schumacher. “It looked like we would have at least got back into the points as he was pulling the cars ahead by many seconds a lap,” said Shovlin.
“Unfortunately, that hope was short-lived when he had contact with Mick that caused a puncture. Overall, a race to forget, we’re going to use the next few days to regroup and prepare for Suzuka where hopefully we will put in a better all-round performance.”
Bottas defends soft tyre gamble
After missing out on a points finish in Singapore, Valtteri Bottas said his team did the right thing by risking a change to soft tyres at the end of the race when their rivals opted for mediums.
“Towards the end, definitely it started to drop [off],” he said. “But I think it was good to try in…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…